


The Raven and The Hawk

by sunryder



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Asgard, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mental Coercion, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Past Lives, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-12 21:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 53,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2125551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint didn’t expect Mjolnir to actually move when he grabbed it. </p><p>Really, he honestly didn’t. </p><p>Clint had silently agreed to pretend like the whole thing had never happened, just a secret between him and Mjolnir. Which shouldn’t have gotten out since Clint had kept some of the world’s most classified secrets while Mjolnir was… well, a hammer. At least, it shouldn't have right up until Clint woke up the next morning with a tattoo on the back of his shooting hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint didn’t expect Mjolnir to actually _move_ when he grabbed it.

 

Really, he honestly _didn’t_.

 

After months of watching idiot supervillains try to snatch the hammer from Thor’s grip—and Tony try to steal it from the kitchen table—Clint had figured out that Mjolnir tolerated no one’s touch but Thor’s. And Clint was the kind of guy who respected a magical hammer’s right to choose who in the hell it wanted to be hefting it. After all, Clint hated it when random people started touching him, and his bows liked to snap bruises on the junior agents who thought Clint’s gear was what made him the best and borrowing it would improve their aim. And if Clint and his gear hated it people touching them, he could only imagine how much the thousands-of-years-old enchanted hammer felt about that shit.

 

But see, for all that Clint respected Mjolnir’s right to be as persnickety as it damn well chose, Clint was a little more focused on the monster about to eat him than he was about violating Mjolnir’s personal space.

 

His bow was broken—snapped in half by slathering jaws—his knives had all been thrown into vulnerable eyes, and one of these freaking Wargs had  _eaten_  his quiver. (And Clint was going to have to punish Coulson for naming these things and forever tainting _The Lord of the Rings_.) So Clint had grabbed the hammer’s handle mid-lunge away from a gaping maw and just swung.

 

He’d been expecting the hammer to stay put, a stable bar that Clint could use as a base to maybe kick his heels someplace that might buy him a bit more time to run. But his first touch of Mjolnir had seared the flesh of his whole arm like he’d shoved his way into a burning building; or, he supposed it might have felt just like getting struck by lightning. It hadn’t been the wrenching pain that came from ripping his shoulder out of its socket, which some part of him had always thought would happen if he ever actually got Mjolnir to move. But no matter how strange the pain, it was worth it when one blow from the hammer ripped the open jaw off the Warg’s face.

 

After that, well… he and Mjolnir just had themselves a good time.

 

They smashed and bashed their way through ribs and skulls, and Clint even got comfortable enough to start throwing the hammer around. (And for a hefty, square, lump of metal the accuracy on Mjolnir was incredible.) In the end it was an all around good fight, just another day in the life of the Avengers. When the last Warg was down, Mjolnir gave a little tug of warning before it flew away to rejoin Thor. The Asgardian seemed to think his hammer had been off taking down Wargs all on its own, and if Mjolnir didn’t feel like sticking around to tell Thor where he’d been, Clint wasn’t going to be the one to tell.

 

Clint had silently agreed to pretend like the whole thing had never happened, just a secret between him and Mjolnir. Which shouldn’t have gotten out since Clint had kept some of the world’s most classified secrets while Mjolnir was… well, a hammer. (Though, Clint did plan on tracking down something like hammer polish as a private thank you for saving his life.) Clint had no problem with keeping this stroke of luck all to himself. At least, he didn’t up until he woke up the next morning with a tattoo on the back of his shooting hand.

 

Or at least, _part_ of a tattoo.

 

The tattoo’s thick, black lines formed a bird’s head, something with sharp eyes and a hooked beak. But the bird’s body tapered off at the shoulders, like the ink had once stretched along the whole of Clint’s arm but had long since faded away. Or, maybe it was just now fading in. Either way, it didn’t take a genius to connect yesterday’s fierce burn of touching Mjolnir with the sting that had taken shape on his hand this morning.

 

Clint pressed his thumb into the ink, rubbing away the ache and trying to rub away the color. “Hey, J?” Clint asked Stark Tower’s AI.

 

“Would you like me to call for Dr. Banner, Clinton?” Which was the most informal Clint had ever been able to get JARVIS to be.

 

“Nah, let’s keep this between you and me for now. No point in worrying anybody until we know that there’s something to worry about. You happen to notice when this started to turn up, though?”

 

“Given your propensity to sleep nestled within in a pile of blankets where I am unable to observe you, I would only be able to estimate based upon the growth pattern I have observed since you ended your REM cycle. Is this sufficient?”

 

Clint ignored the comment about his sleeping habits for the passive-aggressive scolding that it was. Clint was pretty sure that some of Stark’s own voyeuristic tendencies had rubbed off on JARVIS, and if the AI had his way there would be cameras everywhere and all of the Avengers would be forced to roam around naked, just so they couldn’t keep anything from him. “Sure, J. Estimate away.”

 

“I assume that the mark began to appear after you entered your REM state of sleep. You have proven that without such depth you will wake at the slightest provocation, and based upon the way you are attempting to alleviate pain located in the back of your hand, I presume that whatever introduced the mark to your skin caused some discomfort. Without being in a REM state, you would have awoken during the process.”

 

“So, ‘while I was asleep’ is what you’re telling me?”

 

Clint could almost feel the AI rolling his eyes. “Given your usual post-battle sleep patterns I would estimate the process began sometime around midnight and ended around six this morning.”

 

That was a large amount of time for a small amount of tattoo, so Clint wasn’t too worried that he’d get caught out today by any unexpected side effects. Instead, he grabbed one of the wrap bandages he’d stolen from medical and bound up his wrist like he’d strained something in the fight yesterday. (Which, considering the rest of the team thought he’d been fighting with the broken shards of his bow, wasn’t too unbelievable.) Clint could feel JARVIS glaring at him through the cameras like he was an idiot. “I believe we should—”

 

“How about I do my best to keep my arms outside my covers tonight so you can get some better data, and we’ll think about telling someone tomorrow?”

 

JARVIS gave a longsuffering sigh, but conceded. “If you insist, Agent.”

 

“Hey man, don’t ‘Agent’ at me. It’s just a tattoo.”

 

“A _spontaneous_ tattoo.”

 

“I promise you, J. This is not the strangest shit that I’ve woken up to in the morning.”

 

“Somehow, I do not find that a comfort.” JARVIS’ retort was dry and snarky, and since that was the basis of their relationship, Clint knew that the AI would let him keep this to himself. For all that JARVIS was a program, he was more observant than almost anyone Clint had ever met. JARVIS knew that despite Clint’s perfect record in the six months since the Chitauri attack, he was still on a short leash, and most of SHIELD expected him to go rogue any day now.

 

Two days after Thor and Loki had gone back to Asgard (which was a full month before Thor had come back), Tasha had arranged for Stark to swing by the Helicarrier to offer up some suggestions on defense. It took Stark about ten minutes to realize that the same protection he was offering Bruce needed to be offered to Hawkeye as well. Clint had come out of his psych appointment to find that Tasha had packed up all his stuff, and hers, and moved them both into the half-wrecked Stark Tower.

 

So sure, JARVIS knew that Clint could tell Bruce about the tattoo, but he also knew that Stark would get called in to help with the analysis, and Cap would have to be told since he was the team leader, and then suddenly Clint wouldn’t be allowed to fight. Then Coulson would ask why Clint had been benched, and even if Coulson threw himself on the grenade and kept quiet, eventually Fury or the WTC would demand to know why in the hell Clint wasn’t in the field. Needless to say, SHIELD finding out that touching supposedly-beneficial Asgardian artifacts had left Clint marked, would not be a good thing. Best case scenario, they’d pull Clint off the Avengers until everything could be straightened out, and worse case, they’d amputate his shooting arm to study the tattoo.

 

Either way, Clint wrapped up the marks and roamed into the kitchen like there was nothing to worry about. Tasha gave him a long look over breakfast, but she knew that despite his hatred of medical, Clint had the foresight to know when an injury might worsen and keep him out of the field, and nothing in medical was worse than being benched. The rest of the team didn’t mention the bandage, though Bruce replaced Clint’s morning coffee with a tea that was good for tension, while Tony started on designs for a sturdier shooting glove, and he knew Cap and Thor would keep a better eye on him in the next battle.

 

Clint managed two days like that, cajoling JARVIS into keeping quiet and ignoring that on the third morning he had to wrap his arm all the way up to the elbow because the tattoo just kept spreading. (At this point he was pretty sure the bird was some kind of raven. And really, he didn’t know whether to be stoked or panicked that it was a bird of prey.) His forearm was covered in an intricate spiral of wings, like the bird had been captured as it dove to attack its prey. Honestly, despite its Mjolnir-inspired origins, this was turning into the kind of tattoo that Clint might have gotten for himself if identifying marks didn’t get people in his profession killed.

 

Clint knew the time had come to fess up when he roamed into the kitchen and found Coulson waiting just out of the doorway’s line of sight.

 

Clint had taken his own sweet time in the shower that morning, spending more than his fair share of it trying to scrub away at the ink, just in case. The Avengers didn’t really plan on getting together for breakfast every morning, and if you missed one or two Cap wouldn’t come at you with the sad puppy eyes. But still, they’d all be there, and Clint wasn’t ready to explain himself. So instead, he camped out on his balcony with a mug of coffee, shooed away the black birds who’d camped out on the railing, and waited until he was pretty sure no one would be in the kitchen, but no so long that it would start looking suspicious.

 

So of course, Coulson was waiting for him. Coulson’s position meant that Clint had to come all the way into the kitchen before he could spot his handler, tuck tail, and run. If Clint had seen him any earlier there was a good chance he might have actually made it into the vents and away, but trapped in the same room with Coulson meant that there was no way he was getting out without doing serious damage. Damage that he would never allow himself to do to his handler. Well, not when he was the one in charge of his own body, anyway.

 

(Still, he might have given running a shot if Natasha hadn’t appeared behind him and murmured, “Don’t be even more of an idiot.”)

 

Coulson wasn’t even pretending to be there for some reason other than interrogating Clint. There was no paperwork laid out before him, no bowl of oatmeal, and even worse, none of the donuts he reserved for breakfast on bad days. There was nothing there but a mug of still-steaming coffee and Coulson’s unflinching gaze.

 

Clint rolled his eyes and flopped down beside his handler, not wasting the effort to settle in on the opposite side of the table when he knew Tasha would just haul him over anyway. However, that concession didn’t mean he was going to tell Coulson the truth and put him in a position where he had to lie to SHIELD. Clint and his heart had already put the poor bastard through enough. “It’s fine, Sir. I wrenched my wrist trying not to get eaten but I can still shoot.”

 

“And yet, my concern for you still extends beyond your ability to pierce things with arrows.” Phil drolled with the same kind of dry viciousness that made him and JARVIS such good friends.

 

Natasha, of course, didn’t give a shit about letting them have time for their usual verbal sparring. “This is the third day his wrist had been wrapped and each day the bandaging gets more extensive.”

 

“You know you can’t wrap on the same spot every day, Tasha. It can cut off blood flow and damage the nerves, and I _need_ the nerves in my wrist.” Clint made sure to look her dead in the eye while maintaining his slouch. The former said he wasn’t lying, while the latter said he hated that she was fussing. About half of the time he got Tasha to believe his lies about the little things, and when you were lying to an internationally acclaimed assassin those were spectacular odds. (Though, he was never really sure if she was just humoring him when he actually managed to get away with it.)

 

“I believe everyone in charge of your continued existence could agree that you could do with a little less nerve.”

 

Clint kicked his feet onto the table and gave Coulson a jaunty smirk. “My nerve is what you love about me, Sir.”

 

Natasha smacked his feet off the table before Clint got his retort all the way out. He righted himself in time to see Coulson smooth out his expression, from what he figured was a smile at Clint’s scramble. “You’re not adjusting the wrapping, you’re extending the wrapping up your arm. You’re not heating, you’re not icing, you’re not stretching, and you haven’t spoken to Bruce. Something is wrong.”

 

“Seriously, Tash? Banner’s not that kind of doc, and you can’t expect me to run to him every time I twitch a muscle.”

 

Natasha pressed close to his side, all silent support against whatever he thought he had to hide. “You don’t spend three days wrapping a twitch.”

 

“And even if you do,” Coulson interjected, “Dr. Banner is probably the best medical professional in the world when it comes to keeping your condition quiet. He wouldn’t betray your trust.”

 

“And he’d smash anyone who asked.” Somehow Nat and Coulson managed to wrap Clint up in the safe space between them, firing back and forth supportive common sense that chipped away at the isolation he always carried with him. Clint saw things better from a distance; that was his catchphrase and his ultimate truth. But always they reminded him that there was no point in being distant here. They wouldn’t tell, and they wouldn’t turn, but they’d keep pressing until Clint pulled his head out of his ass and accepted that they were right and he was an idiot.

 

Before the two most important people in Clint’s life had met and decided to gang up on him, Tasha had taken the bludgeon approach while Coulson had been like a never-ending drip of water. (In other words: Tasha would ride him until he agreed just so he could come, and Coulson would give him that sad, half not-smile that said he would follow Clint into this idiocy and pull him out when things were done.) Now they combined their skills and twisted it into a hodgepodge of comforting words and warm touches that slipped past Clint’s finely-honed walls and let them in close. 

 

He tried to pull away, he really did. But Tasha’s hand was in his hair and Coulson’s thigh was pressed up against his, and the greater part of his brain still couldn’t believe that they were both still with him after everything he’d done. “I’m fine. Really, my wrist is fine, you don’t need to check it.”

 

“Of course your wrist is fine.” The “idiot” went unsaid by Tasha.

 

“You’re not injured. You’re hiding.” Coulson added with his usual calm certainty.

 

“I’m not faking a wrist injury to keep away from my team!” Clint’s affront was totally genuine, which both Nat and Coulson could hear. They locked eyes and Clint could tell from their eyebrow argument that Nat wanted to pin Clint down while Coulson ripped off the bandage, and Coulson wanted to cajole him a bit more. Either way, Clint knew the wrap was coming off before he left this table. Clint huffed out his most put upon sigh and grumbled, “You both suck.”

 

Natasha propped her chin up on his shoulder. “You enjoy it when I do, and we’ve both heard excellent things about Coulson.”

 

Together they turned matching leers on their handler, but the man refused to be baited. He always refused to be baited.

 

(Every member SHIELD knew to leave their comms on during on-the-job sex where something might go south. The first time Coulson had been to the mark’s taste Clint and Nat had babied him like a junior agent on his first mission. They didn’t want their stoic handler to feel awkward about people listening in on him having sex. Coulson had taken it with his usual grace, then proceeded to—quite literally—blow the target’s mind, and then fuck him into the mattress with the best dirty talk either of them had ever heard. When Coulson got back to their safehouse, he’d just smirked at them and gotten back to work. Despite the subsequent _years_ of poking and teasing, that’s all the information they’d ever got about Coulson’s sexual habits.)

 

It was clever of Nat to turn it on Coulson—which shouldn’t have thrown Clint since she was always clever. Coulson-baiting was one of their favorite games, and with Nat’s warmth at his back and Coulson’s dry smile before him, it was a subtle reminder that for everything else in the world that had changed—the Avengers, SHIELD, Stark Tower—they were still the three of them. Tasha would always be beside them wherever the wind blew, and Coulson would always be the tether that gave them roots. She pressed her hand to Clint’s bicep and slid down his arm to brush against the bandage’s edge, asking silent permission to peel it away and show what he was hiding.

 

Clint sighed, not quite a word, but close enough to “yeah,” that Tasha untucked the loose end. Her soft hands shifted his wrist to her lap, bracing it while she methodically unwound the bandage, wrapping it back up into its neat little cylinder, giving Clint time to brace himself for the reveal. It was good of her to try, but there wasn’t much point. Two turns of the bandage peeled back the outermost layer and revealed the top of Clint’s forearm.

 

The part of his skin lined with the fading wings.

                          

Tasha paused at that sight, then abandoned all pretext of catering to Clint’s emotions and ripped the rest off in a fury. Soon enough his arm was laid bare, in all its black-inked glory. She traced her fingers over each and every line, feeling for what, he didn’t know, but he knew better than to interrupt her perusal. Over the last few days Clint had paid only the barest amount of attention to the marks, just enough to make sure everything was properly covered but not enough to take in any particulars. Even now he paid more attention to Natasha’s fingers than he did to the spiraled wing tips that she was tracing. Clint thunked his head against the back of his chair and caught Coulson staring. Only, like Clint, he wasn’t looking at the tattoo, but instead he was staring at Clint.

 

A normal person would point out that Clint didn’t like tattoos. That the last time they’d mentioned them Clint had said he had too many aliases to ever want to mark his skin in a way that anyone would still be able to know him no matter how far he ran. Clint could see Coulson forming and discarding half a dozen scenarios for how that ink might have ended up on Clint’s skin beforehe landed on, “Magic?”

 

Years they’d known one another, and still Coulson’s ability to know everything managed to surprise him. Clint gave him a pained smirk and replied, “What in the hell else would it be?”

 

“What did you touch to make a raven turn up on your arm?” Natasha wasn’t in the mood for banter.

 

“Mjolnir.”

 

“You didn’t just touch it though, did you?” Coulson asked.

 

“When had my life ever been that easy? My bow snapped and I ended up throwing all my knives because trying to stab a Warg is a stupid idea—” Tasha squeezed his wrist with the kind of viciousness that meant she was about three seconds from ripping off his hand to get him back on target. “I didn’t touch the hammer, I _used_ it.”

 

“But…” Coulson stopped himself before he said that only those considered ‘worthy’ could use Mjolnir. Clint still heard it though.

 

At least, he heard it for about two seconds before Coulson quirked his eyebrow in a way that clearly said, ‘Stop this right now or I will give you a lecture on how much I value your existence and input, just see if I won’t.’ Clint had called that eyebrow’s bluff before, and afterwards he’d spent three days unable to look Coulson in the eye without blushing. Clint shrugged off the threat and answered the question Coulson had actually been meaning to ask.

 

“I’ve got no idea how it happened. I grabbed Mjolnir, felt like my arm had been struck by lighting, and then got back to the fight.”

 

“You’re assuming that the pain had something to do with your mark?”

 

“It started turning up the first time I slept post-battle, and nothing else about the night was off. And since Stark hasn’t complained about the hammer attacking him after all those times he’s touched it, it’s the only thing I can think of. Though I have no idea what in the hell the raven means, or why using Mjolnir means I get way more ink than I ever wanted.”

 

“It is not ink.” A foreign, female voice interrupted their conversation.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha lunged for the intruder’s legs, tackling her at the knees while Clint dove for Tasha’s chair to swing it at the lady’s head. Only… instead of bursting forward like he planned, Clint got yanked back. Coulson grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and forced Clint under the table with one hand while he drew his gun with the other.

 

Tasha’s usual tactic of slithering around her opponent like smoke on the wind worked best with people who relied on their bulk to win fights. While the blonde intruder may have had more than her fair share of bulk, she wasn’t stupid like most of the mercenaries they came across. Tasha twisted and kicked, avoiding a body blow from the blonde’s fist, sacrificing the chance to strike one of her own in exchange. It was as close to even as Clint had ever seen a fight against the Black Widow be—though with her regular sparring with a super soldier and a demigod they were catching up.

 

Clint actually got a little wrapped up in watching the poetry of their fight. The intruder planted her feet, stable as a mountain while Tasha ebbed and flowed around her. Neither woman wasted a movement in two entirely different ways. The woman lashed out with sharp jabs and quick kicks, every strike sure and steady in a way that Clint knew had been trained into her by the long sword she had strapped to her back. To get hit with one of those fists would be like getting hit broadside by Thor’s hammer, and Tasha leapt and bobbed to stay one step ahead, looking for the moment to strike.

 

So Clint may have been distracted, but Coulson never had that problem. (Despite Clint’s frequent efforts to drag him off schedule.) The man heaved out the sigh he reserved for when his special handler-sense said that Strike Team Delta was about to go off script. Then, he lowered his gun. Clint would’ve launched himself up and over the table to offer backup if Coulson hadn’t handed down his gun for Clint to hold on to while he strode forward with his taser—and even after all these years Clint still had no idea where the man kept it.

 

Before Coulson could intervene, Thor came barreling through the kitchen door and took advantage of the women’s distraction to grab the intruder by the waist and hoist her up and away from Tasha. “Brunnhilde, you must cease!” he shouted. The blonde woman dropped her weight, forcing Thor off balance enough that she flipped him over her shoulder and smacked down to the floor.

 

“Thor!” Jane cried from the doorway, having followed after the Asgardian as fast as she was able. Darcy—once again proving why she was Natasha’s favorite—lunged forward to protect Thor, her own pet taser clenched in her fist. (The tactical part of Clint’s brain noticed that she was wielding it just like Phil had taught her, in a grip less likely to get the taser ripped from her hand and used against her.)

 

Tasha put herself between the two women and the fighting Asgardians, pushing them back past the doorframe when shattered tile burst up from where Thor had been slammed. Coulson slipped past Tasha, no hurry to his pace and no wrinkle to his suit jacket despite the melee before him. He plucked Darcy’s taser from her hand—Coulson teaching her all the tricks _she_ knew didn’t mean he’d taught her all the tricks _he_ knew—and left Tasha to bottleneck the other arriving Avengers while he jammed his tasers into vulnerable Asgardian flesh.

 

The jolt didn’t drop either of them to the ground—which Tony’s contractor would probably appreciate—but the pain was strange enough that they leapt apart and turned to Coulson. Thor gave him a look of betrayal since they all knew how Thor felt about being felled by a tiny device that created his own pet lightning. But the woman looked befuddled. “What is this foul magic? Thor, have you bottled your lightning for the Midgardians to use against us?”

 

Clint didn’t Thor was actually capable of looking at someone with scorn, but his time with Stark seemed to have taught him a few new facial expressions. “Do not be foolish, Brunnhilde. These Earthlings are not so far behind our own technology as Loki would have you believe.”

 

The blond—Brunnhilde apparently—puffed up in affront and loomed into Thor’s space. Clint had been pretty sure that the Hulk was the only person capable of trying to out-muscle Thor, but between the woman’s seriously impressive breastplate, the freakishly long sword still strapped to her back, and well, her glower, she actually managed to make Thor look like he was considering that picking a fight with her might be a bad idea.

 

“All of Asgard knows of your fondness for the Midgardians, Thor.” She cast a repulsed look to the Avengers crowded at the door, but Jane knew damn well it was more at her than at anyone. (And if she didn’t, Darcy lunging for the taser still in Coulson’s hand would’ve been telling enough.) “But never before have we believed that your fondness for this backwater world would lead you to betray Asgard in such a manner.”

 

Thor’s fingers twitched in a way that meant he wanted Mjolnir in his hand so he could properly lose his temper. “What do you mean by such a base accusation. Brunnhilde? Speak your mind quickly before my companions and I see you back to Asgard in pieces!”

 

Brunnhilde actually had the stones to scoff at that, which, considering the five of them had taken down Loki, had to be some serious stones. “Any injury you think you and your companions might be able to inflict upon me will be forced back upon you tenfold for your violation of one of the most sacred and eldest of the covenants of your people. Did you not once contemplate that keeping this from Freya would mean war?”

 

Thor glanced past Brunnhilde to Coulson, who gave away no suggestion with his expression. Rather than prevaricating until he had more information like any good spy, Thor just shouted right back. “I do not know of what you speak.”

 

Brunnhilde took half a step towards the kitchen table—which Clint happened to be unarmed on the other side of—and found herself staring down the barrel of Phil’s gun and the prongs of Tasha’s Bite. “You think these petty weapons will deter me?” she sneered.

 

Tasha gave a violent smile and triggered her weapon’s sparks, leaving Coulson with the vague threat of his most bland expression. “Our weapons are not meant to be a deterrent. They’re meant to remind you that you’ve invaded someone else’s home and have offered no explanation for why you’re here accusing our friend of reprehensible behavior. We would appreciate an explanation before you do something that any of us might regret.”

 

“I assure you little Midgardian, were we to come to blows you would not live long enough to have any regrets.” She loomed towards Coulson, and really, Clint was almost tempted to laugh at her for it. Coulson had spent years doing the blackest of the black ops, only to have every bad guy and government spook look at his dapper suit and commonplace features and think they could do exactly what she was doing: loom over him and force him into compliance.

 

Clint was actually looking forward to watching Coulson laugh in an Asgardian’s face then shoot her for extra emphasis, but Thor had never been one to let a friend be insulted when he could get in the way. Mjolnir came whipping through the doorway, careful to avoid scuffing the paint—or anyone’s head—in a way that its wielder never was. The hammer smacked into Thor’s hand, and while he didn’t lift it to threaten, neither did Thor act like he wasn’t ready to swing. “Brunnhilde, you are the greatest among the Valkyrie, but you threaten the life of Phillip, Son of Coul.”

 

Brunnhilde’s eyes flicked from Thor to Coulson, slowly dragging her gaze over his deceptively lethal body. “Truly? The Midgardian who faced down Loki in single combat?” The “and died” was implied.

 

“Through Midgardian magic they were able to revive the Son of Coul as he lingered upon the path to the otherworld.”

 

Clint was expecting a scoff and a speech about how death was no more than a Midgardian deserved for going up against Loki, but instead Brunnhilde gave Coulson a slow nod where she took the chance to trace her eyes over the length and breadth of his frame, and Clint was not at all excited about the gleam he saw in her eye. “My apologies for impugning your honor, Son of Coul. I find myself compromised by the information I came here to discuss and it has made my temper shorter than usual.”

 

Thor full on belly-laughed. “Your temper is always short, fierce Brunnhilde. It is what makes you such a ferocious warrior.” She twisted back around to Thor, her long, golden braids whipping around like weapons in their own right. Thor had the common sense to add, “It is one of the things I admire most about you. Now tell me, what information do you believe I have concealed to the detriment of our age old alliance with Vanaheim?”

 

Brunnhilde turned her gaze to Clint, who was still kneeling half under the table, his chin propped on his crossed arms. He thought he was showing enough of the tattoo to make a point, but Brunnhilde quirked her eyebrow at him and Clint figured that they’d already had enough fights with unknown Asgardians for one day. He shifted his weight and gave Thor a clear view of the back of his forearm and the raven Natasha had been examining not ten minutes ago.

 

“When did you get ink, Legolas? And if you’re all allowed to mock me for a having a building named after me are we allowed to mock Clint for getting the literal version of his name tattooed on his arm?” Coulson raised the taser and sparked it in Stark’s general direction, interrupting the rambling to come.

 

But Clint wasn’t really paying attention to Stark’s commentary, because all he could see was how the sight of his tattoo had drained the blood out of Thor’s face. “How did this come to you?” he stumbled out.

 

Clint popped up from behind the table and raised his hands in the closest he could to calming. “Now, Thor. It was kind of an accident.”

 

“You accidentally got tattooed?” Stark interrupted.

 

“Shut up, Stark.” Clint said, keeping his eyes on Thor. “My bow was broken, and all of my knives were buried in Warg eyes, and it was just _there_. I’m sorry that I touched your hammer, I really didn’t _mean_ to, but… I wasn’t in the mood to get eaten.”

 

For all that the Avengers liked to tease him, Thor was not a stupid man. “Mjolnir. You… you touched Mjolnir.”

 

“No, my Prince, he _wielded_ your hammer.” Brunnhilde clarified. And she smirked at the glare Clint sent her way for being unhelpful.

 

Silence descended on the kitchen. Even Stark’s genius-level appliances stilled like they wanted to know what was coming next. Clint edged around the table. “I know how you feel about people touching Mjolnir. I feel the same way about people touching my bows, and I never would’ve done it if I wasn’t about to die.” It wasn’t fear of Thor that made Clint try and explain himself –partly because Thor never would’ve lost control like that when Jane was watching, and partly because Clint dealt with fear by being an ass, not by bargaining. He explained himself because Thor was good people, and he deserved to have his weapon respected. “Seriously man, I’m sorry.”

 

Thor set Mjolnir down on the table with a thunk. He tipped his head at the hammer, a silent demand that Clint try and pick up once again. Part of Clint was tempted to heave at the hammer and pretend like Mjolnir had just granted him a one-time pass to keep Thor’s teammate from getting killed. But really, at this point he figured he might as well just go for it. It never crossed Clint’s mind that Mjolnir wouldn’t actually move when he grabbed it, something in his bones told him that Mjolnir would always come when he called. So he picked up the hammer with a spin and flicked it back and forth between his hands like he would’ve done with a knife. “Now I get why you can throw this around without wrenching your shoulder out of your socket. It’s surprisingly light for all the damage it can do.”

 

Clint was honestly expecting Thor to grit his teeth and spend the next few days in a fury over someone touching his hammer, but instead Thor let out a chortle and caught Clint up into a bear hug. “Clinton! My felicitations!” Clint felt his ribs creak under the strain of Thor’s muscles, but since the guy was shaking him back and forth like he couldn’t hug him enthusiastically enough with just his arms, Clint let it go.

 

“Wait, why are we felicitating?” Darcy interrupted. “I thought no one else could use myuh-myuh? And wasn’t that was the whole point you got cast down to Earth, to get back Excalihammer?” The Avengers tangented themselves off on the proper usage of “Excalihammer,” while Coulson moved forward and with his presence silently reminded Thor that Clint wasn’t an Asgardian and was about to crumple like a tin can.

 

“No, Jessica Rabbit is right. Every time I try and run tests on it Thor tells me it’s only for the worthy. Ouch, by the way.”

 

Tony’s sarcasm lacked the edge that warned others about when he was actually hurt. Instead, Clint could see Tony’s mind spinning in intricate circles about all the ways he could use this to mock the hell out of Clint. (His replacement bow was going to be made of wood, he could just feel it.) “Mjolnir doesn’t give a shit about worthiness, Stark. It was straight up need mixed with the fact that it likes me.”

 

Tony turned to Coulson and in his most serious voice asked, “Are you sure that ink hasn’t seeped in to his bloodstream and done something to his brain?”

 

Coulson sparked the taser again, the crackle of electricity warning him not to be an ass. “It’s not just a _hammer_ , Tony.” Clint explained. “It’s like JARVIS, but without the talking.”

 

“Are you really comparing my AI to a hunk of metal?”

 

“A _magical_ hunk of metal. Seriously, Tony. Why do you think that, no matter wherever in the tower Thor leaves Mjolnir, it ends up in your lab?”

 

“I thought Thor was toying with my emotions.”

 

“No, when he roams around in nothing but briefs, that’s him playing with your emotions. Mjolnir goes into your lab because it likes playing with the bots.”

 

“How do you know this? Do you speak hammer?”

 

“Hey, we guys who use Paleolithic tools to fight have to stick together.”

 

“I hate to force us all back on topic,” Bruce interrupted. “But none of this explains how you ended up with a tattoo as a result of using Mjolnir in battle.”

 

So Clint explained how it wasn’t so much the using that had done him in as it was the _touching_. He told them all about the pain of it and how the tattoo had been steadily encroaching on his skin over the last few days, and that lying to Natasha was just an exercise in stupidity. “Then Brunnhilde turned up, she and Tasha scuffled, and now you’re all caught up.”

 

The group exploded in noise, everyone talking over one another. Thor rejoiced that Mjolnir had marked him, while Darcy wanted to know if she could get a tat like that, and Jane and Stark were debating the level of autonomous awareness necessary for such a thing. Bruce donned his preferred role of doctor and stepped up to Clint to examine the mark for himself. He wanted to be sure that nothing was more amiss in Clint’s skin than well… the spontaneous appearance of a tattoo. With everyone who could actually be distracted successfully ignoring him, Bruce leaned in to murmur, “I know why you kept it to yourself. Really, I understand. But I swear to you, that the next time you have a medical condition you need to keep from SHIELD, I will keep it for you. I promise.”

 

Clint gave him a soft clap on the shoulder. “I know you will, Doc. I just didn’t want to put you in that position.”

 

Bruce held on to the silence until Clint looked him in the eye. “It’s my risk to take, Clint. And I’d be proud to take it for a friend.”

 

Clint had half a second to take in those words and the truth behind them before Brunnhilde barreled right over the top of their moment. “What does he mean ‘risk’? Why would there be any risk in tending to the needs of a companion in the aftermath of battle?”

 

The other conversations paused, everyone trying to figure out just what it was they’d missed. Thor slipped between Brunnhilde and Clint with his most dumb blond smile in place. After seeing the way Thor could take apart a battlefield Clint didn’t think any warrior worth their salt would actually believe that Thor was an idiot. But SHIELD agents still made that mistake all the time, so he figured it wasn’t completely insane that he was trying it on a fellow Asgardian. “Loki’s use of Clinton damaged his relationship to the institution that he serves when he is not operating as an Avenger.”

 

“Do not prevaricate with me, Thor. You haven’t your brother’s treachery with words and it disgraces you to try and evade.”

 

And suddenly so much about Loki’s particular, “bag of cats” brand of crazy made more sense than Clint had ever wanted it to. It didn’t justify trying to take over Earth or mind-fucking Clint, but he could accept the tactical advantage that came with understanding your opponent a little bit better. Before Thor could once again try and walk that razor-thin line between defending his brother and pissing everyone off, Clint interrupted. “My bosses aren’t happy that I helped Loki try and take over the world.”

 

“But Loki’s hold was beyond your ability to stop. In all of Asgard only the great Queen Frigga is capable of matching Loki’s magical power, and she believes that with Loki’s strength augmented by the Tesseract even she would not have been able to stop him.”

 

Contrary to the beliefs of the SHIELD psychologists, Clint knew Loki’s actions weren’t his fault. He still wanted to shoot the bastard for hollowing him out, but he’d been tortured and truth-serumed enough times to know when his actions were his own. But still, it was always nice to hear someone else agree with him about that. “And yet, I still stole nuclear material, took out our base of operations, killed seventeen people, and mortally wounded one of my best friends.”

 

Brunnhilde crossed her arms and stared at Clint like she was parsing through all his words to decide whether or not this was a Midgardian joke. “This is not acceptable treatment.” It seemed the behavior of the rest of the Avengers was enough to convince her about the truth of his explanation. Clint expected her to spout something else about Loki’s treachery—but as Asgardians seemed to so enjoy doing—she blindsided him. “You will return with me to Asgard where you will be treated with the respect befitting your station.”

 

“Wait, what?” Was all Clint got out before Brunnhilde shouted for Heimdall and tossed Clint over her shoulder. Some part of him curled up in mortification at a woman picking him up quite so easily. But considering how the entire team took an unbearably long second to grasp what had just happened, he figured he had plenty to mock them about if they ever decided to give him shit for getting tossed around like a sack of flour.

 

Brunnhilde put on a burst of speed and was halfway to Stark’s balcony by the time Clint heard Avengers coming after them. The thud of Steve’s feet was the loudest, while the echo of Stark’s yell caught them, then turned into murmured words to keep Bruce from Hulking out in the un-reinforced kitchen. (Clint bet that when he made it back to the Tower he’d find that overnight the Hulf-proofing had spread from Bruce’s rooms to everything in the Avenger’s floors.) Darcy shrieked and tried to come after him, with stubborn Jane right on her heels. (They wouldn’t make it in time, and even if they did they’d get smashed into the floor, but it was naïvely good of them to try.)

 

Tasha and Coulson, of course, didn’t make a sound.

 

If either of them had been the one taken Clint would’ve picked up the gun and brought down the supposedly invincible Asgardian under a single, fatally placed bullet. But, for all their disparate training, neither Coulson nor Natasha would be willing to take the shot when Clint was in the way of a shot going awry. But instead, his two favorite people chased him on silent feet. (Clint had never been able to understand how Coulson’s Italian leather shoes managed to stay so quiet, which was a strange thing to think about, but better than contemplating the fury he could see on Coulson’s features.)

 

Against the frantic bumping of Brunnhilde’s shoulder Clint managed to force himself up just high enough to cast them a reassuring smile before he and his ride leapt in to the waiting Bifrost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoy casting my stories, so in my head Brunnhilde is Lucy Lawless.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint had heard all about the Bifrost. Some of it had been from Thor waxing poetic about how glad he was to have gotten back a method for getting between the worlds, but his words weren’t so much about the Bifrost as they were about Jane. (Which, Clint could understand the draw. If he had someone look at him with the pure affection that Jane had when she looked at Thor, he would talk about it all the time too.) Jane’s commentary on the Bifrost was more of a lecture on the hypothetical physics of it. But listening to Jane talk about science was kind of like listening to Stark talk about engineering: you didn’t understand a damn word, but the tone was beautiful. You could tell that given half the chance she’d take the bridge apart and put it back together again, just to get her hands on all its innards. Between the two of them he knew the Bifrost working was important, and could maybe repeat a few of the words that explained why it did what it did—and that the science making it work was gorgeous—but really, that wasn’t how Clint knew what he knew.

 

No, _Loki_ had liked to talk about it.

 

Somewhere in the middle of Clint’s mind-fuck, Loki had mentioned that he’d fallen from the Bifrost and found himself in the hands of his partners in world domination. Well, he called them partners, but it didn’t take eyes like Clint’s to see the way Loki would shake and sweat after having one of his little mind chats with their slug-riding, would-be overlords.

 

Loki liked to ramble to himself when he was trying to get his shit back together, and for some reason Clint was the one he liked rambling to. So, vicariously Clint could tell you just what it was like to slip from the Bifrost and plunge into the nothingness of Yggdrasil. (And that Clint knew that that was the World Tree that connected the Nine Worlds was a testament to just how much shit his brain had gone through in the last few months.) Clint could tell you how, when you stepped out of the Bifrost chamber, you stepped on to the Rainbow Bridge that glistened under the blanket of unfading stars. Beneath you, the mighty falls that marked the edge of the world sent up a mist that washed over you and cleaned away the taint of whatever place you’d been traversing. But best of all, the capital of Asgard reared up at the end of the bridge, all sleek lines towering up to the endless sky.

 

So, to be absolutely honest, despite the source of most of his information about the Bifrost, Clint really would’ve liked his first trip across it to be something less… bumpy.

 

Yeah, he was gonna stick with bumpy.

 

There weren’t a lot of words to convey the humiliation of being hefted, or the way Brunnhilde’s armor jammed into his stomach as the ripping wing tossed them about on their journey. And really, Clint would never, no matter how long he lived, try to explain what it felt like to watch the world close behind him as Tasha and Coulson dove to reach him before he disappeared.

 

No, it wasn’t really the introduction to Asgard that he’d built up in his head after all his time with Loki, but it was more his style. Especially since the shift from Bifrost to stable ground jostled him in Brunnhilde’s grip just enough that he could pull a Black Widow.

 

Clint shoved at Brunnhilde’s back, forcing himself far enough over that she instinctually adjusted her feet to compensate for the shift in weight. Years of having the shit beaten out of him by Natasha had taught Clint one or two things, so the moment Brunnhilde bent her knee in preparation to move, Clint kicked his legs up and over. He jolted her grip just enough to brace his hands against the small of her back and slip his legs through her arms like he was flipping around the parallel bars.

 

He hit the ground and tucked into a roll, landing on his feet and launching himself back to the Bifrost’s entrance. Only, there was nothing there but a circular window to empty space. He was halfway out to a sea of endless stars, with blue spirals of cosmic dust dancing off in the distance. He knew from his time with Loki that beneath him was the cold void of space, and somewhere beneath that were the Chitauri.

 

But in between Loki’s bitching about his fall, the Asgardian had mentioned a few choice details about the Bifrost’s construction, about how it and half its base had tumbled over the falls when Thor destroyed the Rainbow Bridge that connected it to Asgard’s capital city. Clint called up those memories as he jumped. Because “base,” meant there was something beneath this chamber, and that gave Clint a chance to hide until he could sneak back through the Bifrost.   

 

So Clint leapt off the edge and twisted back around to grab the first edge he could find. Only, a massive hand shot out from the safety of the Bifrost chamber and snatched Clint out of the air before he could even begin to drop. Clint grabbed at the arm’s golden gauntlets and tried to wrench himself free. Only to be stopped by the deepest voice he’d ever heard. “You will not fall to safety, as you suppose, if you leave the platform. This near to the edge of Asgard, space is already exerting its pull. Were you were to jump, you would be dragged away from our oxygenated air and in to nothingness. You would not survive.”

 

“Think I’m gonna survive if I stick around here with the crazy lady?”

 

“I am not the impaired one here.” Brunnilde snapped. Clint noticed that big-n-gold had Clint captured with one hand, and had his massive sword out with the other. He twitched it in quiet reminder every time it looked like Brunnhilde was thinking about charging forward and taking matters back over her own shoulder.

 

“She was given orders to retrieve the misplaced Valkyrie on your world and see to it that they were brought before Freya and the All-Mothers.”

 

“As kick-ass as that band sounds,” big-n-gold gave the slightest twitch of his lips in something that only an individual gifted in reading Coulson’s facial expressions would be able to tell was a smile. “Usually you _ask_ people before you take them with you to another world.”

 

The sword shifted again, shutting Brunnhilde right up before she could comment on that. “Brunnhilde is ever diligent in the pursuit of her duties.”

 

“And yet, I’m still gonna play my ‘was abducted out of my kitchen while still in my pajamas’ card.” And really, he was. They were SHIELD sweats and a Black Widow t-shirt rather than the almost nothing he would’ve been wearing a few months ago before he started to worry that WSC goons would be turning up to take him away in the middle of the night, but the principle still stood. “So, how about you turn the Bifrost back on, let me go home and get dressed, and we can try this again like civilized people.”

 

“If I allow you to leave then I will be inhibiting Bunnhilde in her purpose, and that would be a betrayal of my oaths to Asgard.”

 

“Well, me getting kidnapped by Asgardians leads to me inadvertently betraying my oaths. So, since your people have already wronged me and my world, how about you let me have this one?”

 

“This is pointless, Heimdall!” Brunnhilde snapped. Obviously she didn’t appreciate the value of a good round of sarcasm like big-n-gold did. “I have been tasked with taking him to the All-Mothers and you are preventing me from fulfilling my duty!”

 

Without changing his expression, Heimdall managed to give Brunnhilde a look that should’ve made her curl up in a ball and cry. Clint even thought it was impressive, and he’d spent most of his professional life be glowered at by a disappointed Coulson.

 

“If you believe it would be best to take him unwilling before the rulers of Asgard, only to have him escape from your control yet again, I shall turn him over to you.” Brunnhilde looked like she thought that was a brilliant idea, and she’d be more than willing to just sit on Clint though the whole of his meeting. However, taking Clint anyplace would mean getting him out of Heimdall’s grip. And Heimdall wasn’t small, even when compared with Thor—who to be honest, was Clint’s only _real_ interaction with an actual Asgardian. With his massive golden helmet that arched up like a sturdier version of Loki’s horns and armor that jutted out from his shoulders, Heimdall’s build just got more impressive.

 

Clint wasn’t fond of big guys who thought they got to haul little people around and make them do what they wanted, but there was something different in Heimdall’s golden eyes. This wasn’t about power and this wasn’t about proving a point, he really did genuinely believe that it wasn’t just in his duty. The gatekeeper of Asgard thought it was actually for the best that Clint stuck around and got introduced to whoever in the hell the “All-Mothers” were. For a reason Clint couldn’t define, he trusted Heimdall’s judgment.

 

Clint interrupted the staring match the two Asgardians had descended into. (Well, “match” was too generous a term. Brunnhilde was glowering and Heimdall almost seemed amused.) “So, you’re telling me that if I go have a chat with these people I get to go home?”

 

There was a moment of hesitation before either Asgardian responded, and that told Clint pretty much everything he needed to know about how unlikely that was. “Alight, then.” Clint kicked out and smashed the heel of his foot into Heimdall’s nose. The man’s head was supposed to snap back and instinct should’ve called his hand up to his face to check on the damage, loosening his grip on Clint’s shirt. But, while the force was enough to push back his head, the rest of Heimdall didn’t flinch. Brunnhilde shouted, and Heimdall cracked his neck while he went back to center, but he didn’t give Clint an inch of leeway to get loose.

 

That… that took an iron backbone and a hell of a lot of skill. And Clint respected skill. He gave Heimdall the cockiest grin he could. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

 

Heimdall quirked an eyebrow, while Brunnhilde was just done with this shit. “Of course we can blame you! We are attempting to help you, to protect you, so that you can reclaim you life here on Asgard and you are repaying this kindness by treating us and our people with scorn!”

 

Clint was about to demand to know what in the hell she was talking about, when Heimdall interrupted. “Would you be amenable to remaining in Asgard for your conversation and its aftermath with the All-Mothers if you were joined by your Midgardian associates?”

 

Clint shrugged as best as he was able. “Sure. But you’ll have to talk them through the Bifrost.”

 

“Talking will not be necessary. The Son of Coul has been scolding me vociferously since you entered our realm.”

 

“How vociferously?”

 

“I believe your phrase ‘shouting at the heavens’ would not be an inappropriate comparison.”

 

Clint wanted to demand, “Coulson?” and accuse Heimdall of being full of shit, but mouthing off any more to the guy who still had him held over an abyss of nothingness probably wasn’t the best bet. However, Brunnhilde just wasn’t having it. “This is not the time to be catering to the Midgardians, Heimdall! They think their short lives and interaction with Loki have taught them all they need to know about how things work in the rest of the worlds. They are _children_ , Heimdall, and they have no place in matters of Asgardians!”

 

Clint was going to try and kick Heimdall again, he really was, but the larger man cocked his head to the side like he was listening to something that was worth all his attention. Both Clint and Brunnhilde had the sense to know this wasn’t a time to interfere. He turned his golden eyes on Clint, and suddenly he understood the true depth of what ‘all-seeing’ meant. Heimdall stared at him like Tasha did when Clint was too broken to string two words together but he still tried to lie. It was like in that moment Heimdall knew him better than anyone ever had before, better than Clint knew himself, and the Asgardian was weighing all that against his duty so he might decide what to do next.

 

For the first five years of working with Phil, Clint had seen that exact same look and tried to bribe, lie, cheat, curse, and fight his way out from underneath it. It had never worked before, and he doubted it was going to start now. So Clint stilled, and let Heimdall look his fill. Whatever it was he saw, the Asgardian brought Clint back in to the safety of the Bifrost chamber and let him stand on his own two feet. He lifted one massive hand to cup Clint’s cheek and gave him what felt like a long look that had nothing at all to do with his duty. Heimdall’s golden eyes sparked, and as he pulled his hand away, he rubbed the pad of his thumb along the line of Clint’s cheekbone, a casual enough touch that he could pretend it hadn’t sent a tingle up Clint’s spine.

 

Instead, in the same deadpan voice he said, “Stand to the side so no one falls on you when they step through the Bifrost.”


	4. Chapter 4

Phillip J. Coulson was not an impetuous man.

 

Impetuous men did not become Senior Supervisory Agents at SHIED. Even more, impetuous men didn’t have the foresight to get themselves labeled the SSA when really, they were the undeclared Deputy Director over Operations and possessed all the codes to take over SHIELD should Nick Fury ever be taken out.

 

(He would prefer for that never to happen, though it wasn’t so much about his fondness for Nick as it was that he considered himself far better at being the man in the shadows than the man who actually strode around in a wretchedly dramatic eye patch and coat that put Severus Snape to shame.)

 

People knew very little about Phillip J. Coulson. Much of what they _thought_ they knew was more rumor than actual fact. Before the Avengers he could’ve counted the people who properly knew him on one hand. But one thing anyone who’d been in SHIELD more than three days knew, was that Coulson was not now, nor had he ever been, nor had he ever been mistaken for, a rash man.

 

Which is why the Earth’s mightiest heroes were currently cowering behind the doors to Stark’s balcony like they thought the sky was about to fall in.

 

Because you see, Phillip J. Coulson was yelling at the sky. Specifically, he was screaming for Heimdall to, “Open the damn Bifrost!”

 

Somewhere behind him he could hear Stark doing his best attempt at a whisper. “I didn’t know Agent could swear.”

 

While Darcy replied, “Not gonna lie, it’s actually kinda hot.”

 

The part of his mind that was Phillip, the piece who was meticulous about his suit selection and the proper method of filing paperwork, pointed out that there had to be a more efficient way of going about getting to Asgard. There must be a form, or a password that he could use if he just did the right research. However useful that efficiency might be when they actually _got_ to Asgard, the part of him that was Agent Coulson was furious that his operative was in peril on unknown ground, and demanded that he be returned this very instant. Coulson had never left anyone behind before and, other planet or not, he wasn’t about to start now.

 

(The less said about the Phil part of his brain—that part that was positively feral at the thought of _his_ Clint being in danger—the better.)

 

Cap, ever the voice of reason, edged beyond the confines of the tower. He ignored how Jane and Darcy grabbed for Cap to pull him back to safety—though Darcy’s concern was tinged with a desire to see how far Coulson would go, mixed with her delight in taking any chance she could to enjoy Cap’s physique. “Um, Agent Coulson? Do you think that maybe we should let Thor try again? Since he is Asgardian and all? Heimdall might listen to him.”

 

Coulson was a hair’s breadth away from forever offending his personal eight-year-old by yelling at their childhood hero, when Natasha slipped past the clump of Avengers and shut everyone up. As usual, she didn’t need to say a word to do so. Instead, she handed Cap his shield and go bag, complete with several changes of clothes, a comforting paperback, and the spare uniform that he insisted he’d never need but Stark made anyway because he was a closet mother hen. She did the same for Thor, Banner, and Stark, all their go bags a product of the first drunken night of team bonding. Though Stark’s first attempt had contained nothing but scrap electronics and Thor’s had been full of pop tarts, the idea had stuck. (Natasha and Clint had gone back to the bags the next day and made sure each and every one was properly packed in case things went south at the Tower. It was the closest either of them had gotten to affection in the early days of the Avengers.)

 

Natasha also handed off bags to Jane and Darcy, the latter of which had to have her hands smacked so she didn’t open it then and there. He shouldn’t have been surprised that his agents had made bags for the two women since they were at the Tower more often than not. But if he knew where to look, Coulson thought he might find bags for Pepper, Happy, Colonel Rhodes, Selvig, and anyone else an Avenger had begun to express a marked preference for. He took it as a compliment that Natasha handed him a go bag he didn’t pack.

 

Natasha took a last glance over the Avengers, making sure her team realized they were properly armed—Steve with his shield, Tony with his suitcase suit, and Bruce with his stretchy pants. She called out to JARVIS to inform AD Hill and Miss Potts that they would be out of contact for the foreseeable future, and to tell the Fantastic Four and X-Men to pick up the slack. Tony added a shout, “Don’t let anybody destroy the Tower while we’re out, dear,” while Natasha turned to stand beside Coulson and face the sky.

 

Silent and stubbornly ignoring the raised eyebrows behind them, Natasha slid her small, unlined hand into Coulson’s weathered grip. She’d told him once, months and months after she joined SHIELD—and well into Strike Team Delta’s own first night of drunken bonding, which really, given his disposition and hers, was just Clint drinking—that she’d known he wasn’t just a suit because of his hands. He had the standard trigger finger callus, but any agent with proper training had that. No, she said there was a scar on his palm, a hair thin line of slightly paler skin that came when you were fool enough to try and push aside a knife with your hand.

 

He’d laughed when she said it, and asked what made he think he wasn’t just an idiot who’d panicked while trying to protect himself. She’d smirked with enough knowing that in that moment Phil mentally transferred her over to that list of people he could count on one hand. “Normal people don’t stop knives with their hands, Coulson. They stop them with their forearms. Someone tried to stab you, and you leaned into it to grab the blade.”

 

Today on Stark’s landing, she brushed her fingertips over that scar before she settled her palm against his and took his hand in the most affection she’d ever shown him when there were non-Clint witnesses. Even after he’d died that most she’d given him was a nod and a “welcome back” in Russian. That touch was her telling him to take a breath, that he didn’t have to grab the blade when he had her standing next to him. To trust her.

 

Simultaneously they looked to the sky and Tasha called out, “Heimdall the Golden, the Farseeing. You, Gatekeeper who stands against the wind that would blow Asgard from the sky, we seek your aide.” Stark was three seconds away from saying something inappropriate, Phil could feel it; and so it seemed, could Jane. She stomped on his foot before he could draw enough breath to interrupt.

 

“We know you are tasked with guarding Asgard from all foes, but we are friends and allies to Prince Thor, and we are the capturers of Loki. We seek nothing but the return of our companion. However, if, in your wisdom, you believe it necessary to keep him within Asgard, we ask that you open the Bifrost to allow us entrance.” Natasha gave it a moment to see if he would respond, and when he didn’t, she played her trump card.

 

“Heimdall, you see all. You know why we ask.” She dropped her voice to a murmur that only Phil could hear before it was carried away on the wind. “He is our heart, Heimdall. And he has been stolen away to the same place as the one who took him from us. Do not make us beg.”

 

There was a moment of what felt like deathly stillness. Some part of Coulson knew that far below he could still hear the incessant honking of horns and the never-ending sound of New York City, but there was a stillness in his bones. Then, the sky ripped open above them and the while funnel of the Bifrost came down to claim them all.

 

The journey was like a wind tunnel of color and light. Behind him Coulson could hear the echo of Tony demanding to know what in the hell was going on, while Jane tried to shout out an explanation. But beside him he felt Natasha prep herself to come up in a fighting stance, while Thor somehow found a way to move forward, his hammer ready if necessity demanded it, but wanting his presence alone to be enough to solve the situation.

 

The Bifrost dropped them with a jolt and before Coulson could draw his gun or Natasha could leap for Brunnhilde’s throat, Thor demanded, “Heimdall, what is the purpose of this?”

 

“Three days ago Freya felt the appearance of the mark on Clint Barton’s arm. She went to the All-Mothers for their permission to send a Valkyrie to Midgard to find and claim the bearer of the mark and bring them to Asgard to stand before the Mothers.” The man in question pulled his massive sword halfway out of the pedestal, disengaging the Bifrost behind them while he spoke.

 

Stark stepped around the aggressive wall of Avengers and roamed over to Clint. “Just so you know, it’s usually a good idea to get permission before your drag people off. I know that every time I whisk someone away to another country my lawyers have a panic attack, so I can only imagine what they’d do about another planet.” Stark rambled while he handed over Clint’s bow, giving him half a breath to unclench now that he had his weapon in his hand, before Tony handed over the small duffle that contained Clint’s gear and a set of actual clothes.

 

“In Brunnhilde’s defense, it is not often that someone refuses a summons to Asgard.” Thor tried to explain. Only, the explanation didn’t hold much weight since the Avengers were too furious to see common sense.

 

Brunnhilde looked as though she wanted to say something that would rip apart any thought that her behavior needed to be justified, but Heimdall cocked his head to the side and spoke. “Clinton Barton has been summoned to appear before the All-Mothers. He will not be permitted to return to Midgard until after he has done so.”

 

“Yeah, that still doesn’t explain _why_ , though.” Stark interrupted, constitutionally unable to keep his mouth shut.

 

Once again, Heimdall cut Brunnhilde off at the pass. “The right to share that information is reserved for the All-Mothers.” Heimdall shifted his gaze away from Thor and directed it to Clint. “It would be wise to follow their wishes.” Three minutes Clint had been left alone on a foreign world, and somehow he’d managed to get Asgard’s supposedly incorruptible gatekeeper on his side. Coulson was pleased, of course, he knew the value of local intelligence in any operation, but when local intelligence smiled like that at his asset there could only be new and complicated paperwork.

 

Though, when Clint just shouldered his pack and strolled down the Rainbow Bridge like he didn’t have a care in the world, Coulson felt the sinking sensation that paperwork might be the least of his problems by the end of this. Brunnhilde stormed after Clint, and Natasha slithered after her, while, thankfully, the rest of the Avengers followed along. But the way Heimdall had given Clint a slow nod before Clint decided to comply and trust in the request was not helping Coulson’s foreboding.

 

However, Coulson had long ago learned that his premonitions of doom were no excuse not to enjoy the scenery. He’d gone on missions in some of the most beautiful, war-torn places in the world, and he knew that you had to a take a breath and appreciate what was around you before you got sucked in to the depressing hole where you believed there was nothing in the world worth saving.

 

As it was, impressive didn’t seem to do Asgard justice.

 

The main city was a mess of strange, half curves that seemed to defy what little Coulson knew of physics and engineering. The city glistened, bright and golden against the last light of the sun. And behind it all were two planets taking up space in the twilight sky like they were moons. As much as he was trying to enjoy his very first—and probably only—chance to see another world, the more vindictive part of Phil’s brain pointed out that the massive palace that dominated the skyline looked more like organ pipes than anything.

 

Brunnhilde escorted Clint—and by association, them all—to the palace, glowering away anyone who looked like they were about to approach the group. Jane and Tony had the same fascination with the architecture that made both completely miss the gawkers. (Though, Stark’s situational awareness was always better than people gave him credit for.) However, after the third time someone twitched away under the force of Bunnhilde’s thousand-yard stare, Natasha glanced across the width of the group from their adopted positions at three and nine o’clock, and caught Coulson’s eye.

 

The people weren’t coming up to their group to see Thor; they were coming to see Clint.

 

The citizens lingering in the hall had to be the ones with something that at least resembled sense. Coulson assumed that everyone else was preparing for the All-Mothers’ party, or—based on some of Thor’s stories—were partying already, and had been for days. But these people had the intel to know what was going on, and the sense to try and set themselves apart from the crowd. And what they were seeking was Clint. Their eyes flicked over the group, not seeking out faces, but instead trained on every inch of exposed skin. Only after they lit upon the mark that took up Clint’s whole forearm would they then look to his face, like there was something there they expected to find. A few of them seemed disappointed by whatever it was they saw in Clint, but more often than not a bright smile would break across their features and they’d share a glance with their companions that seemed to say, “Did you see that?”

 

Without a word, the Avengers sunk into their default defensive formation. Bruce stepped to the front beside Thor, casually asking questions about the design of Asgard. The pull of Tony’s mechanical ideas was enough to tug Jane away from Thor, and his snark was enough to get Darcy, and he brought the two women with him to the group’s center. (Stark’s ego wasn’t thrilled that out of the suit he was the most vulnerable of them, but he wasn’t fool enough to fight the natural order of things.) Coulson stood in what was usually Thor’s spot—Hulk-side middle—but in Thor’s territory the Asgardian got to take the point position. Natasha was Coulson’s opposite on the other side of the group, and Cap took their six. Clint refused to be completely shuffled to the middle, but kept pace half a step between the girls and Cap, twisting back and forth to keep up a conversation with those before him and behind to make the whole display seem more natural.

 

Phil liked to think that there was nothing nefarious about Asgard, but after the second bunch of people pointedly stared at Clint before they burst into frantic whispers, he was concerned. Ally or not, there was a furious blonde woman stalking before them who’d dragged Clint through a magic portal against his will. A blond boy puffed out his chest and strode away from one of the whispering groups, like he actually thought his arrogance would get him to Clint untouched. But the boy’s friends tugged him back at Phil’s sharp glare. A glare that Phil passed on to Cap.

 

Silently, Steve slipped the case that held Clint’s bow and quiver out of the archer’s hand. Clint hated being without his bow, and glowered at Coulson for suggesting it. Clint _never_ liked giving up his weapon of choice, and that only got worse when he was in foreign territory that he knew damn well was paying him too much attention. Coulson did not roll his eyes, no matter how much he wanted to, and Clint could see the restraint all over his face. Clint had no problem with grumbling his discord, but he let Steve take the case without resistance. In return, Steve handed over his shield, which Clint slipped over his tattooed arm. It wasn’t perfect concealment, but with a little effort Clint would be able to block the sight of anyone who wasn’t really working for a view.

 

The shield served its purpose as they made it through the rest of the halls, diverting the people’s attention through the whole of the group. Though, when a pair of massive golden doors swung open to reveal the palace’s main hall, Coulson soon realized the shield wasn’t going to do them much good. They’d gone to the effort to conceal Clint, but there wasn’t going to be any concealing him from the press of people lining the tables throughout the room. All of who turned to stare at the Avengers the moment the door slipped open.

 

Thor puffed out his chest and tossed his arms wide, greeting the waiting assembly and drawing all the attention to himself. He shouted greetings across the room, taking in their welcoming calls with Stark levels of poise. Thor twisted back and waived the Avengers in after him, but Coulson noticed that he didn’t expose his back to the room, and kept Brunnhilde out of his blind spot so she couldn’t launch an unexpected attack. “Come, my friends. Together we shall feast with my mother, and my companions, the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, before we return to Midgard.” Thor announced it just loud enough that everyone in the hall could hear, and could understand that Thor had laid a firm claim on the Avengers’ time and presence while they were in Asgard. And that he’d thoroughly declared that no matter what anyone else thought, he was taking them home after this meal. However short he might declare the meal to be.

 

Coulson let Stark and Darcy step forward with bright, disarming smiles in place while they dragged Cap, Jane, and a far more hesitant Bruce along with them. Together the five of them would be able to distract whatever kind of Asgardian they came across, intending to draw away enough attention that Clint could make his way to the safety of the Warriors Three unmolested.

 

Only, that plan presumed a level of self-preservation that Clint Barton had never possessed.

 

Seated at the high table at the far end of the hall were three women. They were dressed no better than the rest of the crowd. In fact, the clothes of the woman on the left side were positively plain. But you didn’t survive undercover missions without getting a sense of who was in charge. Even when he was _dead_ , Coulson would’ve known that these three women were the All-Mothers who had ordered Clint to Asgard. Phil leaned to the side to urge caution at exactly the same moment Clint tossed the shield back to Cap, and at a volume not even pretending to approach whisper he declared, “Fuck this shit,” and went striding down the center aisle.


	5. Chapter 5

Clint was vaguely aware that Thor had blanched the moment the words crossed his lips. Which hey, Clint didn’t need Loki’s fingerprints on his brain to realize that with Thor being a prince, at least one of these women was probably his relative. As it was, Clint knew full well that the woman with the crown braid sitting at the center of the table was Frigga. And since, if someone had mouthed off in front of his mama, Clint would’ve blown a gasket, Clint figured he could do Thor the same courtesy. 

 

He strode down the aisle with fancy-pants Asgardians torn between staring at his tattoo and gawking at his bad behavior, but he wasn’t alone. Tashsa had fallen in to step beside him the moment he’d stepped beyond the safety of their little Avengers clump. Coulson had done the same, but he’d taken a moment to puff out a put-upon sigh before he did. It was good that Clint had them with him. Not necessary—because Clint was not going to let another alien control his life. He was not going to let that shit slide. Not again. But still, it was nice to have them there.

 

Out of the corner of his eye Clint could see various Asgardians popping to their feet, like Clint had to be stopped before he made it to the high table. But most of them just grabbed their defensive companions and dragged them back down to their seats, unwilling to let their show get interrupted. Even if they’d tried to stop him, Clint had faced down worse odds than a room full of Asgardians. No, instead he ignored them and kept his eyes on the women in front of him, all of who were having different reactions to his approach.

 

At the center of the high table was Thor’s mom, Frigga. And she looked it. At the sight of her Clint down a rush of affection that wasn’t his own, and was instead the product of his time with Loki. But still, Clint liked the lady. Despite being the queen, she wasn’t decked head to toe in jewels like some of her other Asgardians. Her dress was simple, though Clint had been on enough undercover ops with Tasha to know expensive fabric when he saw it. She wasn’t even wearing a crown, just a thick twist of a braid that tumbled down her back in the loose curls that Thor had when he was fresh from the shower. Though most of her female subjects looked like the kind of posers you’d find scrambling for power in a teen movie, Frigga wore the easy kind of power that needed no posturing.

 

She was flanked on either side by women who couldn’t have been more her opposite. (Well, if it was possible for there to be _two_ opposites.) To Frigga’s right was a young woman with thick black hair and a grown of golden leaves. She was in a white shift, lined with pale yellow fabric that peeked out from between the folds of her dress as she moved. Clint didn’t need the casual brush of Tasha’s hand to tell him that the dress was meant to put on a show without actually giving anything away.  

 

To the left of the queen there was a woman Clint could only think of as wild. Her hair was a tangle of not-curls, highlighted by a color that Clint’s common sense said was blonde, but part of him wanted to call green. Her eyes were lined with thick khol, matching the blood-black of her dress, and making her green eyes stand out as the high point of color on her face. She had that look in her eyes that Natasha got when they were about to go spectacularly off book and she was going to enjoy every inch of damage that they were about to do. The look was almost feral, and Clint rearranged his mental evaluations about the most lethal person in the room.

 

Clint came to a dead stop just shy of the table and crossed his arms in disapproval. Before he could demand to know what the hell they wanted, Thor stepped in front of Clint to make polite introductions. Only, Brunnhilde seemed to have about as much patience as Clint, and she shouldered her way past Thor and swept into a polite nod of her head before she declared, “All-Mothers, I have brought you the bearer of the mark of the Valkyrie, as you requested.”

 

Frigga quirked an eyebrow at Brunnhilde’s behavior, like she’d been thinking about finding her side-stepping Thor amusing, right up until the woman decided to be smug about her delivery. Frigga didn’t even need to twitch, and the wild woman at her left zeroed in on Brunnhilde and drolled, “I am surprised that it took one of your reputation three days to track down a Midgardian with no magic to hide him.”

 

Clint’s position behind Brunnhilde gave him the perfect line of sight on the flush that spread across the back of the woman’s neck at being scolded. “He was somehow able to conceal the mark from me, but less than an hour ago I discovered him and brought him straight to you.”

 

“And did you inquire as to _how_ he concealed the mark?” Wild Woman queried. And really, there was no good way for Brunnhilde to answer that.

 

So of course, Clint chimed in. “I had a bandage wrapped around it.”

 

The young woman on Frigga’s right pursed her lips in an attempt not to laugh, while Frigga herself had the poise to keep her giggling confined to the twinkle in her eyes. “I see. And was this bandage enchanted in any way? Spelled to match the tone and texture of your skin so that no one would know what it concealed?” Scorn had begun to creep into Wild Woman’s tone, though it definitely wasn’t directed at Clint.

 

“Nope. I stole it from SHIELD’s medical department the last time I sprained my ankle, and that was before Thor turned up and with his magical hammer.”

 

“Mjolnir is not magical,” the young one interrupted, furrowing her brow at Clint like he was rambling in gibberish.

 

Clint snatched up something from the platters before her that he was pretty sure was an apple—or at least a peach’s cousin—and plopped himself down on top of the closest table. “If you don’t think Mjolnir is magic, then you haven’t been paying attention, lady.”

 

Clint’s sight was better than his hearing, but he didn’t need for either to be good to hear the choked off gasps that came from a good portion of the room. Thor cleared his throat and stepped forward again, careful to pay Brunnhilde more respect than she’d showed him. “All-Mothers,” he dipped into a bow, “allow me to present to you, my fried and companion, Clinton Francis Barton, better known as Hawkeye. It was he who suffered under the hand of Loki, only to join with myself and the other Avengers in the battle against the Chitauri. He has since stood as a trusted member of our company against many foes, and there is none that I trust more to be my rearguard from on high.”

 

Thor gave it a half a moment of silence, just in case one of the women felt there was something to add, then turned to Clint to finish the introductions. “Friend Hawkeye, it is my privilege to make you known to my mother, Frigga, the Queen over all Asgard. She is joined in her rule by Idunn,” he nodded to the young one at Frigga’s right, “the Young, and Gaea,” this time he nodded to the Wild Woman at Frigga’s left, “the Mother. Together they stand as the All-Mothers, the rulers over Asgard.”

 

The last time Thor had come back from Asgard he’d mentioned that Odin was personally taking care of Loki’s latest imprisonment. None of them thought that would do much good, but Thor had been cagey about what “taking care of” meant, so none of them had pressed. Clint couldn’t imagine a world where Odin would willingly give up his throne, and Clint was in the mood to press. “Did you guys finally depose the old bastard?”

 

“You dare speak that way about the All-Father of Asgard?” Brunnhilde demanded, and this time a fair chunk of people had leapt to their feet in offense. Clint figured these people needed to rearrange their priorities if they were willing to suffer Clint’s insulting to behavior to Frigga, but him pointing out the flaws of Odin they couldn’t stand.

 

“You mean the abusive asshole who degraded his younger son to the point he was willing to commit genocide just so his daddy would have something kind to say? The same guy who taught his son that subjecting other people to his will was the only way to go, which ended up in me getting mind-raped? You mean that guy?” He bit into the apple with a sharp and declarative snap. “I think I get to speak about him any way I damn well choose.”

 

Brunnhilde lunged forward, only to find herself face-to-face with Natasha, whose posture was screaming, “Just give me a reason.” Brunnhilde sunk back on her heels, accepting that fighting with Midgardians to get them to Asgard was acceptable, while fighting with them in front of the All-Mothers was not. Still, through clenched teeth she hissed, “You know nothing about what you speak.”

 

“Oh trust me, crazy lady. I’m pretty sure I’m the _only_ person who understands just how much Odin fucked up Loki.”

 

“Lauffey’s son was a Frost Giant,” someone from the crowd called.

 

Another tacked on, “His madness was no fault of the All-Father’s”

 

“It was inbred!”

 

Thor looked like he was half a second away from smashing all their faces in for talking shit about his baby brother. Make no mistake, Clint blamed Loki for all the shitty decisions he’d made that involved screwing with Clint’s head and led to the killing of all those good people. But Clint knew that Loki’s mind had only been partly his own in the events that had brought the Avengers together. And even more, he knew what it was like to love a shitty brother even when common sense said to cut him out of your life. Which meant that if Thor wanted to bash the hell out of his own subjects for being bigoted assholes who refused to accept just how much they’d contributed to the problem, Clint would be right beside him. Not for Loki, but for the brother who couldn’t seem to let him go.

 

Frigga though, Frigga looked like she was about to be sick. Her sons weren’t stupid men. They had an awareness of the world that came from being completely honest with yourself. (Thor in a good way, Loki in a shitty way.) And there was no way in hell that either boy had gotten that trait from their father. Which meant that Frigga knew exactly how much of Loki’s behavior was her fault, and she was going to spend the rest of her life trying to make up for it. Clint regretted that his sharp tongue had hurt her. The least he could do was try and make it up to her.

 

Years spent dealing with SHIELD’s worst meant that Clint knew that the best way to make idiots feel stupid was to laugh at them. So Clint started to chuckle at all the things people had been yelling out, and when no one joined in he tapered off and stammered out, “Wait, are they being serious?”

 

Stark hopped up next to Clint and took a bite from the apple in Clint’s hand. “Of course they are. People are idiots. Haven’t you learned this yet?”

 

Thor cracked a smile at the antics of his friends, and chimed in. “Many prefer to believe that Loki’s proclivities are the product of his lineage rather than the influence of anything we might have done. However, many of them are beginning to accept that it is otherwise.”

 

“For all his wisdom, Odin All-Father made mistakes. He could not tolerate an opinion contrary to his own, a flaw that our triad seeks to correct.” Frigga added.

 

Suddenly, it all clicked for Clint. “Odin’s hanging out with Loki in his latest cell, isn’t he? He’s trying to fix things.”

 

Frigga nodded. “The All-Father has taken Loki away to an undisclosed location where _both_ of them are receiving counsel about their actions.”

 

There was some mild grumbling in the background and Clint just couldn’t help himself. “I’m guessing the ‘both’ part of that wasn’t exactly Odin’s choice?”

 

Gaea gave him a grin that positively feral. “It was a condition of his eventual return to the throne.”

 

Clint gave all three of the women a sharp nod. “Sounds like good planning. I hope it all works out for you. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, does someone wanna tell me what I’m doing here? Because, no offense, but this place makes me twitchy.”

 

Idunn slid from her seat behind the table with fluid grace. “In what way?” And that wasn’t the question Clint had been expecting.

 

“When Loki mucked around in my head he left some memories behind. The same way I know Odin was a shitty father, I know how to get to the kitchens from here. It’s not the most comforting thing in the world to have knowledge that isn’t actually mine.”

 

Idunn floated down the steps towards Clint, and something about her made him want to sit up straight and look presentable. So, of course, he slouched a little more and took a sloppy, chomping bite. “Are you sure that the impressions you have of Asgard are remnants of Loki’s mental touch?”

 

“First off, ‘touch’ isn’t the word you’re looking for. Smash, hammer, throttle. These are all more accurate choices. And second, Thor talking about home doesn’t give me the visuals that I’ve got floating around my brain.”

 

Idunn gave him a soft smile, the kind Steve never meant to give Tony when even Cap knew that Stark had forgotten how people actually worked. It was an affectionate smile that sent up warning flags in Clint’s mind to get from a lady he didn’t know. Idunn lifted her soft hand to rub along the line of Clint’s cheek, and he reared back to avoid the touch. “No offense, but letting any Asgardian who isn’t Thor touch me hasn’t been working out great.”

 

“Oh, Clinton,” She sighed. “You have placed your trust in the wrong Asgardians.”

 

And shit, if that just wasn’t the wrong thing for her to say. Clint stiffened at the insinuation that he’d let Loki into his mind willingly, or that getting thrown over Brunnhilde’s shoulder had been his choice. Tony slouched off the table in between Clint and Idunn, forcing the woman back with his bulk and not at all nervous about her touching him because after all these years he was immune to feminine wiles that weren’t Pepper’s. Before things could disintegrate into a knock down drag out fight with the leaders of Asgard, Coulson stepped forward with the most lethally placid of his expressions in place. “It would go a long way to earning our trust if someone would tell us why we’re here.”

 

“ _You_ are not supposed to be here.” Brunnhilde snapped. “Our invitation was extended only to the bearer of the mark. Had Heimdall not been overcome with sentiment,” she snapped that out like it was a dirty word, “then you would still be on Midgard, screaming at the heavens.”

 

Coulson absolutely did not flick his eyes over at Clint after that announcement, he was too good to have a tell like that. The rest of the Avengers though, they all looked to Clint. Not a one seemed embarrassed by Coulson’s reaction, though there was a little bit of surprise in Cap’s eyes that the normally stoic Agent Coulson had gotten emotional, but he understood the reaction. Tony, of course, tipped his head back to make eye contact with Clint and snarked, “It was very dramatic. I thought Natasha was about to pull out her knives against Golden-eyes, and Agent had out his paperwork for an official reprimand.”

 

The words were perfect. For all that most people considered Tony Stark a fool, the man knew how to control a crowd. A few of the Asgardians were laughing, like they knew the whole thing was a joke, and if Stark could joke about it, then Brunnhilde’s accusation of them screaming at the heavens probably wasn’t quite correct. There were enough people who believed Tony’s brand of logic that those who were inclined to imagine Midgardians as overdramatic children awkwardly chuckled their way through their confusion.

 

Coulson let Tony’s comment sit just long enough that people began to wonder, but not so long that they could form an opinion. All he needed was doubt, and his demeanor would convince them of everything else. Coulson tucked his hands into the pockets of his unruffled—despite inter-dimensional travel—suit pants, and mildly replied, “Considering that you took our friend and fellow warrior against his will, we believed it would be best to follow. After all, the abduction of one of Midgard’s most beloved heroes is not good for relations between our two worlds. And we’ve been led to believe that your current government is attempting to correct the damage done by Odin’s isolationist and unilateral actions.”

 

Brunnhilde went to snap back, but Gaea’s deep chuckle stopped any and all of the room’s conversation. “You’ve been outplayed, child. Cease your argument before you dig yourself a deeper hole and the Tactician is forced to embarrass you further.”

 

Brunnhilde huffed, but turned her back on their group and stomped off to a clump of other warrior women standing at the side of the room. A few of her companions gave her conciliatory pats, but one lingering at the back kept her eyes on Clint. Once again, Clint felt the need to rearrange his mental standings of lethality. This woman had made an attempt to blend in to her surroundings with a shimmering dress and her black hair unbound and tumbling down her back. But her eyes were the color of Coulson’s undoctored morning coffee, and they were too clever by far. She could’ve been one of the woman sitting at the head of this room, and Clint would’ve bet every penny he had she’d been offered the job and turned it down for the same reason Coulson wouldn’t let the words “Deputy Director” turn up in front of his name, despite that being his pay grade. She knew there was power in the shadows, and strength in letting people underestimate you. Clint gave her a half nod to acknowledge her gaze, then turned back to the verbal sparring match between Coulson and Gaea.

 

Clint was sure that the two of them could’ve gone on like that for hours, but Frigga slid to her feet and whole room stopped talking. “Come, Clinton. Escort me to the inner chamber where we may discuss your presence here in Asgard.”

 

Years of undercover work meant that Clint knew how to fake posh when he had to, so he sauntered up to the table and stretched out his hand for Frigga. He tucked it in to the crook of his elbow and followed her lead out one of the side doors. “Of course,” she raised her voice just enough that the Avengers could hear her, but so posh a lady would never actually demean herself with a shout. “You are free to invite your friends to join us in our discussion.”

 

Clint gave her his best shit-eating grin. “I always want them around.”

 

Frigga held on to her placid smile until they passed through the doors into the other room. The space was all white: white pillars, white marble benches, white curtains. The only color in the place was the warm, brown stone of the floor and the golden accents that carved intricate patterns through the room.

 

Clint tried to pay attention to his entrances and exits (only available through the windows and double doors that would no doubt be guarded the moment they shut), but Frigga’s silence demanded his attention. “You are surprised that they all followed you here.”

 

Clint dropped his volume to match her casual whisper. “All of them? Yeah. I figured a few of them might come after me, but those few know me well enough to guess that I’d be able to get myself free.”

 

Frigga pressed a soft kiss to Clint’s temple and tugged him down with her to the middle of the three benches. She shifted so they were facing one another, her legs still demurely tucked under the bench, and Clint with one leg kicked up and over so he could get away a little more easily. Frigga let him fidget for a moment, finding a spot that appeased his twitchy nature. Then she took his hands between hers, cradling them like they were something precious rather than the scarred and calloused tools of an assassin.

 

She traced her thumb over the leftover bruises of his knuckles and murmured, “You always were fidgety.”

 

Whatever casual muttering had been going on between the Avengers, it stopped completely. “What?”

 

“You were always terrible at sitting still. Even when you were a thousand years old you never could quite manage to keep yourself from moving.”

 

“Even when you were shooting. You always had to be bounding about, twisting through the air when most folk had the common sense to stand still.” The new voice wasn’t Frigga, or Idunn, or Gaea, or any of the Avengers. It was the woman from outside, the woman with the sense to blend in and the knowing eyes. Somehow Frigga had sucked up enough of his attention that he hadn’t noticed her entrance. He might have been more disturbed by that if these women hadn’t been talking to him like they’d actually met before.

 

“Is there are reason you guys are talking about me in the past tense? Or, you know, at all?” Frigga gave his hands a slight squeeze like she was trying to calm him down, and that freaked the hell out of him. “Seriously. You’re Thor’s mom, so I’m trying to be polite here, but it’d be great if you could tell me what’s going on.”

 

Frigga released a slow and steady breath, her silence stilling the entire room from interrupting. Despite that, he could feel Natasha settle in behind him, watching his back so he could devote the whole of his attention to Frigga’s story. “I am told that you begin your stories with ‘Once Upon a Time,’ so I shall do the same.

 

“Once upon a time, Valkyries roamed the Nine Realms. They are Furies who all fear and desire, and they guard both Asgard and our sister world, Vanaheim, with their very lives. One of these Valkyrie was a Vanir girl called Heidir. She made a name for herself as an archer, the best in the whole of the Nine Realms. She was a beautiful young thing, with a wicked sense of humor and loyalty that no one could match.” Clint wanted to ask what this had to do with anything, but his instincts were warning him that he might not actually want to know.

 

“In the end it was her loyalty that doomed her. She laid down her life in a battle against the Frost Giants and saved Odin’s life.” Clint bit into his lip to keep himself from declaring that Heidir would’ve been disappointed with what he’d done with the life she saved. Frigga could see it on his face though. “She didn’t do it for Odin, she did it for me. So that my unborn son would not grow up fatherless.

 

“Half of all those who die travel to Odin’s hall, Valhalla, and the other half travel to Freya’s hall, Folkvangr. For all his wisdom, my husband only gathers those who are strong of arm, while Freya,” Frigga tipped her head to the woman with the knowing eyes, “has always been more discerning.”

 

“So this Heidir went to Folkvangr?”

 

“She did indeed, and there she dwelt for over a thousand years.”

 

“I hate being the inane questions guy, but you’ve gone past tense again.” Tasha jabbed him in the back, and really, Clint knew this wasn’t the time for interruptions, but he’d been whisked off to Asgard when all he wanted was breakfast and he was getting tired of all these people refusing to answer a single question in a way that actually told him anything.

 

“Heidir vanished from Folkvangr thirty-seven years ago.” Freya answered this time, managing to sound straightforward without explaining anything at all.

 

He still didn’t know what they were talking about, but his common sense wasn’t fond of what they were trying to imply. “I’m thirty-six.”

 

“Thirty-seven if you count the nine months spent in your mother’s womb.” Freya sauntered towards him with an even stride Tasha employed when she thought a mark was worth speaking to like an equal rather than to be seduced.

 

“Uh huh. If this Heidir is so dead that she’s not even in Folkvangr anymore—”

 

“The spirits of the dead only leave my realm when they choose to be reincarnated.”

 

Clint stumbled up and away from the bench, his hands out in front of him like that would do him any good. “Oh, _hell_ no. Nobody here is the reincarnated form of anybody!”

 

“You always were dramatic.” Freya grinned.

 

“No I’m not—was not, _stop that_!” Freya laughed, that slightly unhinged laugh that everyone got when they realized everyone had survived a firefight. “My name is Clint Barton. I am a man, and I’m from Earth, and I’m not the reincarnated version of this girl!”

 

Freya stepped towards him with her hands outstretched, like he was about to be pulled into a hug. Clint took a stuttering step back. Only bad things happened when he let non-Thor Asgardians touch him, and these women were already talking about how they wanted to screw with his sense of self. “You are. You are a peerless archer, a warrior that I would trust at my back in any fight, and among the oldest of my friends.” With each statement she took a step forward, reeling Clint in with her soft words.

 

Natasha brushed her knuckles against the back of Clint’s hand and the lure broke. “I am _not_ your friend. And seriously, if your Valkyrie friend was happy in Folkvangr for the last thousand years, why in the hell would she want to get reincarnated now?”

 

Freya flinched, and Clint leaned forward with raised eyebrows, waiting for her response. “Heidir did not inform me of her decision to pursue reincarnation, but I have theories.”

 

“Please, enlighten the rest of us,” Clint snapped from the security of the more practical ground.

 

“Heidir was in love when she passed to Folkvangr. I imagine she got tired of waiting for him to come and join her.” And well, that just took Clint’s feet right out from under him, didn’t it?

 

“In love with who?” escaped Clint’s mouth before he could stop himself. A whole different kind of silence settled over the Avengers. Before they’d wanted to keep up with the conversation, but now they wanted to know what had driven Clint to ask such a question. After all, it didn’t matter who the past life lover of this Asgardian was, because Clint wasn’t a reincarnation. And even if he was, this Asgardian wasn’t going to come to Earth with Clint. And even if he did… it was a stupid question anyway, and Clint regretted it the moment it crossed his lips. But he was now, and always had been, a romantic, and things like that would always happen to him.

 

Clint took some small comfort that Freya didn’t burst with a smug smile and a name. No, she grimaced and through clenched teeth muttered that she didn’t know. “Obviously you weren’t that great of friends if you didn’t know who she was in love with.”

 

“You had a gift for talking and talking without ever actually saying anything.”

 

Clint whipped out a finger and pointed it at Stark before the man actually managed to say a single word, but he knew it was coming. “Shut up.” Clint wanted to snap back that he was a _he_ and this dead woman was a she, and SHIELD gave classes on making sure you used a person’s preferred pronoun, but Freya wasn’t going to listen. “This has been great and everything, but if that’s all you’ve dragged me to Asgard to talk about, consider me talked to, and I think it’s time we all get back to our own realm.”

 

“You can’t leave.” Freya declared, and the Avengers flinched towards their weapons.

 

Frigga immediately corrected, “You would not find it in your best interests to leave at this moment.”

 

“Why the hell not?”

 

“Because they will come for you.”

 

“Who? More crazy Asgardians?”

 

“Exactly.” Freya said it in a teasing tone, like she was dragging it out on purpose.

 

Clint was one smartass comment away from jumping out a window and letting the current carry him straight back to the Bifrost. “Lady Freya,” Coulson interrupted. “If this belief about Clint’s alleged past life presents a threat to his wellbeing, we need to know.”

 

“It’s the opposite, in fact.” Freya smirked at Clint.

 

“So help me—”

 

“You are a reincarnated Valkyire who was in love, but died before you could share the name of your beloved” Frigga interrupted, not willing to subject Clint to any more teasing. “That alone would be enough to spark the interest of suitors. Each of them wants to be the secret love that a Valkyrie chose to come back for, and if they are not, they want to be the one who steals away the Valkyrie from the individual who failed to realize that they were the object of affection. The competition won’t just be between Asgardians. When the Vanir and the Dwarves find out that you left our world without entertaining a single suitor, they will begin to send representatives to pursue you.”

 

Freya dropped sauntered up beside him, a ferally bright smile on her face. “Even if you didn’t have a tragic story that appeals to the conqueror in us, now that they’ve seen the first male Valkyrie, they’ll pursue you. I admit, you made a far prettier woman than you do a man, but your male form does have its pleasing attributes.”

 

“She’s got a point.” If Clint could’ve set Tony on fire with his glower, he would’ve. “You do have a nice ass.”

 

“First off: screw you, my ass isn’t nice, it’s spectacular. Second off—”

 

“Your arms,” Tasha added, with her own vicious smile that said she found this whole thing unspeakably hilarious. “There’s something viscerally appealing in a man who can take you against the wall without worrying about getting dropped.”

 

The male Avengers just stared at Natasha like they couldn’t believe the words leaving her mouth. Then they turned to Jane for confirmation, only to have the scientist flush and flick her eyes in the direction of Thor’s mother, who was listening to the whole conversation. As one they turned their attention to Darcy, who gave a vigorous nod. “Totally accurate. And I’ve totally had arm-related daydreams about Clint before.”

 

“None of you are helping this situation!” Clint shouted.

 

“Queen Frigga, how long would you recommend Clint stay in Asgard in order to sufficiently satisfy everyone’s curiosity and discourage them from following him home to Midgard?” The tightness of Coulson’s no-nonsense voice broke across the impending fight like a laser sight in fog and dragged everyone back to common sense.

 

“Given his time as a fighting companion of Thor and his backstory, weighed against the general knowledge that he was Loki’s chosen companion and the general perception of Midgardians, I believe a week should be sufficient time.”

 

“A week!” Clint demanded, only to have Coulson intercede.

 

“We will need some time to discuss that timeline amongst ourselves, and we’ll let you know if we find it agreeable.” From one breath to the next, Coulson had the Avengers gathered up and on their way out the door, with Thor leading them along to some place where they could speak in private. And where “speak” could mean Clint yelling at the top of his lungs while half the group contemplated murder and the other half contemplated a breakout.

 

The moment the door snicked closed behind the Avengers, Freya tucked away her happiness in favor of something more practical. “Stark took a bite out of the apple while Clinton was eating. What affect will that have on the spell?”

 

Idunn had spent the whole of the conversation looking disinterested in the byplay before her. In truth, she’d been watching the golden light of her spell struggle to cling to Clinton’s soul. She would find an opportunity to meander past the Avenger’s quarters, but unless he suddenly welcomed the foreign magic with metaphorical open arms, the spell would be sloughed off inside the hour. “I do not know. The spell should have been sealed from the first bite of the golden apples, only growing stronger with each taste, but the spell did not stick. Stark’s interference should have interrupted the spell’s forward progress, but should not have broken it completely.”

 

“Broken?” Freya demanded.

 

“Broken. By the time the sun has left the sky there will be no trace of my magic on him.”

 

Freya turned to Frigga, demanding an explanation, but not fool enough to forget all the magical power pent up in Frigga’s otherwise demure frame. “Have you any idea why?”

 

“I believe that I have made it clear that I refuse to have anything to do with this scheme of yours. I find it repugnant, and Clinton and his Avengers will not forgive you for actions.”

 

Freya did not huff out an affronted sigh at the queen of Asgard. She had lived too long to be prone to such dramatic displays. But still, she wanted to. Instead she turned to Gaea, who all but cackled at the two women for their failure. “I could explain, but you would not understand.”

 

“And why not?”

 

“Because, for all your years collecting them for Odin, you have never understood the Midgardians.”

 

“And you do?” Freya spat. “You may have understood them once, but you’ve spent far too long wrapped up in the concerns of other worlds to know a thing about your precious Midgardians.”

 

“A good mother never forgets her children.”

 

“And a true warrior never forgets her shieldmates! Heidir was a true friend and Valkyrie and I will not see her lost to us forever because she had the misfortune to be reborn into a Midgardian body.”

 

“Reincarnation was her choice, as was all the risks that come with it.”

 

“But right now she is not making her own decisions, she is not even aware of what is happening to her. And _that_ , she never could have anticipated. If I had fallen victim to the same misfortune she would do no less for me.”

 

“Cease this,” Frigga interrupted. “Gaea and I have made our opinions on this madness perfectly clear and no amount of self-righteous fervor from you will change our opinions. We have each sworn not to prevent you, and that is the most support we will provide to this mad scheme.”


	6. Chapter 6

Clint slammed through the doors to the suite that had been set aside for the Avengers and went straight to the wall of windows on the far side and started jimmying one open. “Uh, Clint?” Steve tried to ask.

 

“Fuck this noise, Cap. I’m not sticking around to have these bastards screw with my head again.”

 

Thor dropped into one of the lounges spaced evenly around the fire pit merrily burning in the center of the room. Clint felt for the guy, he really did, but this was bullshit. “Do all Midgardians find the concept of prior lives so distasteful?”

 

Clint moved on to testing the next window while Bruce explained that no, there were several religions whose theologies involved some form of reincarnation. “But, I don’t think Clint’s objection is religiously based.”

 

“Damn right it’s not.” He grumbled.

 

“Then,” Thor paused when Jane squeezed the hand she had on his knee in reminder. “Then may I ask why you object to something that most Asgardians would consider the highest of honors?”

 

“I wouldn’t have guessed that you guys would find coming back from the dead honorable.” Tony pointed out, riffling through the options on his StarkPhone like he’d be able to get into contact with JARVIS from here.

 

“To be a Valkyrie is an honor, and to return from the dead for the love of another is a risk that few would be willing to endure, even for those they profess to love more than life itself. That Clinton has done so—”

 

Clint whipped around from yet another window that refused to budge. “Clinton has _not_ done so. Clinton is his own damn self, not a woman who came back from the dead because she got stood up by a man!”

 

The whole room stilled. Until Stark—because of course it was Stark, when was it _not_ Stark—said, “This might be just me, but that wasn’t the response I was expecting.” He glanced between Clint, Tasha, and Coulson, but none of their expressions gave anything away. “Should I have been?”

 

Under normal circumstances Clint would’ve kept his mouth shut, would’ve moved on to other things and left Stark to piece things together for himself with that massive brain of his, but today he was tired. Clint was just so damn tired of people telling him who he was. The foster home had told him he was worthless, the circus told him he was good for nothing but shooting, SHIELD had told him he was meant to kill, Loki had told him he was a drone, and now the WSC told him he was a traitor. He was sick of all these people shoving him in to a box and deciding for him who they wanted him to be.

 

And this was the way it always went. Clint had learned to deal with whatever reality other people tried to foist on him and he’d find a way to make it work. He’d accepted that almost all of SHIELD saw him as nothing but a means to end people they found irritating. But he found a way to make it work because Coulson listened to him when Clint said he shouldn’t take the shot—and the threat of Coulson was enough to make everyone else listen when he wasn’t around. And when Clint wasn’t sure, when he didn’t know which way was up and which way was right, he still had Tasha to follow him into the dark and drag him back out unscathed.

 

But Loki had made him a traitor, and SHIELD had accepted that, had kept telling him that he wasn’t welcome in their ranks because they called it truth. So he’d gone to the Avengers, and he was still trying to figure out if they wanted him to be a traitor, or if they really meant all this shit about him being a hero. Six months into this new identity and he still didn’t quite have a handle on it, and now he had more people telling him who he was supposed to be. And it was too much, too soon, and he didn’t have the stomach for it today.

 

So when any other day he would’ve ignored it, today he snapped. “You’re not the only one with shitty parents, Stark.”

 

“Ah. Booze?”

 

Clint snorted at how easy the question came to Stark. He was more than a little grateful that Stark didn’t tiptoe around the subject, didn’t waste his time asking delicate questions and pretending like their childhoods did anything more than suck. “And bruises,” Clint added. “Well,” Clint turned away from the unopened window to offer his best attempt at a grin, “I say bruises, but there was this one time with a baseball bat.”

 

Tony grinned back, the shared understanding of shitty fathers passing between them. “Isn’t that just the way it always goes?”

 

“I…” Thor lurched to his feet. “I do not understand. I cannot be understanding you properly.” Thor looked legitimately horrified at what Clint was implying.

 

For all his months on Midgard, Thor had been guarded from some of the harsher realities of life on Earth. He’d spent most of his time with Jane, fussing over her in between touring New York and training with the Avengers. Along the way Clint, Tony, Tasha, and Bruce had taken pains to keep their pasts to themselves. They did it partly because none of them were sharers, and partly because it didn’t do a damn bit of good to inflict history on Thor when he was working through his own shit. (Tasha knew all Clint’s secrets, and Clint would lay down money that Tony and Bruce had at least acknowledged their histories before they dove straight back in to science. But Thor, for all his bright smiles and unflinching honesty, wasn’t yet on anyone’s list for confidential information.)

 

Bruce, as always, took it on himself to try and explain. “Clint’s objection to being called a Valkyrie isn’t about being thought of as a woman in a past life, it’s about being considered the kind of woman who’d leave heaven because of a man.”

 

Thor wanted to ask, every inch of screamed for him to pull on his nobility like a cloak and demand to know what had happened to Clint in his youth, why he would use that tone when speaking of the baseball bats that he’d seen in Steven’s game. Why it would be used in the same sentence as “bruise.” But out of all of them, Thor was the best at knowing when to hold his tongue. There were moments when Nat would push when she should let things lie, like it was an interrogation, and times when Bruce should be pushing but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. But Thor, Thor knew when to speak and when to hold his tongue, how to push and how to keep his peace.  

 

So instead, Thor locked away his instinctual response into his ever-growing list of questions and stayed on the topic at hand. “Is love not a good enough reason to leave the bounds of Folkvangr?”

 

Bruce let the question hang there, but Clint and Tony ignored it to stand side by side before the window in their pursuit of another escape route. Bruce huffed out a sigh that told both men he really didn’t appreciate being put in this position, but he answered anyway. “For us, a thousand years is a long time to wait in Folkvangr before you decide it’s time to come back for someone. Or for someone to follow you there.”  

 

Thor looked to Jane and brushed heavy fingers along her cheekbone. “Aye, that is troubling.”

 

Clint braced himself, but that… that was it.

 

Nobody waited for him to explain, nobody asked any more questions. The Avengers just turned to their debate about whether they should leave now or take Frigga’s warning seriously. (Whether they actually believed her or not, for Thor’s sake they were willing to take her word on things.) Soon enough things devolved into a whole string of evil schemes about ways they could convince everyone in the Nine Realms that Clint wasn’t worth the effort. (Which included the program Tony was tinkering with on his phone to vibrate on the right frequency to shatter the glass that Clint hadn’t managed to open.)

 

“It would probably be for the best if some of you went back to SHIELD and updated them on the situation,” Coulson pointed out. Clint had to give him props for phrasing it in the most unassuming way possible, giving everyone the chance to choose for themselves whether they would leave or not without demanding it of anyone.

 

Of course, despite the loose terms everyone objected like Coulson had singled them out to send just them back home. “Hell no!” Darcy declared, while Bruce murmured quiet words of solidarity, and Cap declared, “We really would prefer to stay with Clint, Agent Coulson.” He didn’t need to look to know that Tasha had looked at Coulson like he was an idiot for even suggesting it, and that Tony was diligently ignoring everything that wasn’t on his phone.

 

Clint pressed his forehead to the glass, pretending like the sheer drop below their window was open to him. That maybe he could grab the grapple from his quiver and go swinging, the closest he’d every get to flying when it wasn’t propelled by one of his teammates.

 

Thor intruded on the daydream with a hesitantly hopeful, “Perhaps things will not be that bad. Maybe Clinton will find Heidir’s mate and they shall meet as two souls meant for one another but long since parted.”

 

With his mind already out the window, Clint intruded on the silence that followed Thor’s optimism. “My Father liked to beat the shit out of my Mama and I, Thor. And she stayed with him. Stayed with him every damn time. No, more than _stayed_ with him. That means that maybe once upon a time it might have actually crossed her mind to leave him. It never did, not once. And she’d still be with him today if he hadn’t wrapped their car around a tree with both of ‘em inside.”

 

He rolled over on the glass, slouched against it like if he pressed hard enough it might pull back and be a decent place to lay his head. “Thor, I don’t give a damn if this guy was the love of Heidir’s life. I may be young compared to an Asgaridan, but this I know. If she was still waiting for him after a thousand years, then he’s not worth coming back _for_.”

 

 

**XXXXX**

 

 

They’d all retired after Clint’s confession, and it had been a long night. Moreso for the rest of the team than for Clint, but he still felt like someone had bound up his chest and squeezed. He’d spent the night skimming along that knife’s edge between sleep and waking, where his dreams of being left behind in Asgard to marry some bastard with fists just like his father were too vivid for him realize that he’d been dreaming until he woke with a shudder and grasped for the knife he had under his pillow.

 

He should’ve asked Tasha to stay with him, to spend the night watching his back in this place he didn’t trust in the slightest. But Coulson had divvied up responsibilities, sending Thor, Cap, and—after she gave him an affirmative head bob—Tasha, on reconnaissance. Darcy had objected that she was great at getting information out of people who didn’t want to share. Coulson had given her the eyebrow of, “Under what circumstances did you think this was a good life choice,” and she’d pointed out that she had a fantastic rack to clear the way. Clint had been around Coulson long enough to see the impulse to share about seven different dirty responses flash across his face, but he kept himself to a nod of acquiescence and Darcy had gone along as well. Stark, Banner, and Jane stuck around to figure out an escape plan, which really was more them trying to figure out if between the three of them they could distract everyone long enough to make the Bifrost work.

 

Clint had been left behind to his own devices, which meant sleep. Or at least, an attempt at sleep.

 

He woke up with that ache behind his eyes that meant that whatever in the hell he’d done last night his body didn’t consider it rest. The silken sheets were twisted around his thighs and waist, pinning him to the bed, and really, Clint didn’t need psych to tell him that that had screwed with his head. What was screwing with him at the moment though, wasn’t the sheets, or the nightmares, or being on damn Asgard in the first place. No, he grabbed his knife because someone’s hot, moist breath was against the vulnerable skin of his throat.

 

Clint slammed his elbow up and back and tossed his tangled weight on top of his attacker before they could recover. He rammed the knife high and hard under the chin, forcing the man’s head back at an awkward angle that meant the intruder shouldn’t have been chucking like he was. “I had thought you seemed feisty last night. I am pleased that you have lived up to my expectations.”

 

The bastard underneath Clint was broad enough to put Cap to shame. And worse, the bastard knew it. Clint had a knife to his throat and the idiot was wriggling underneath him. Not to get free, but to better line up Clint with the cradle of his hips. Clint pressed the blade a little harder against the underside of the guy’s chin. “I don’t really give a shit about what you expected from me, or what in the hell made you think you had the right to expect anything. What I want to know is how in the hell you got in my room.”  

 

The guy settled a little, but he managed to grin at Clint like this was his plan all along. “How do you know that your companions did not deem me worthy and let me pass?”

 

The short answer was because Natasha would never find anyone worthy. She’d tolerate whomever Clint chose until they posed a threat to his wellbeing, but she’d only grant him that leeway because he’d chosen them. Last night Natasha had chosen to go information gathering, which meant the role she’d chosen to play in this whole crazy endeavor was intelligence. Instead, he bit his tongue and snapped back, “I don’t like blonds.”

 

And the guy was incredibly blond. With curls that spread about his head like the halo of an angel that was begging to be debauched. (Shut up. Being a superhero did surprisingly terrible things for his sex life and Clint could appreciate the aesthetic of the man currently between his legs.) The guy pursed his lips in what, under other circumstances, Clint might mistake for genuine displeasure. “Considering the shade of your own hair, I am concerned about what this implies about your own sense of value.” The sneaky bastard managed to slip his arms out from under Clint’s knees and dropped his hands to Clint’s hips. And no, Clint was not tired enough to miss how they were the perfect size to grip him tight and make him move.

 

Clint pushed the tip of the knife just enough that the pain bit into the guy’s skin and he could feel a trickle of blood make its way down his throat. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

 

Really, this guy was messed up. And do you know how messed up you had to be for Clint to think you were messed up? Clint could actually feel the bastard hardening beneath him at the threat of violence. “Perhaps I vanquished all your companions so that I might prove myself to you in battle?”

 

“Then you probably should let me kill you now so you can avoid the prison sentence for attacking Thor.”

 

“Ah, my Clinton. We Asgardians value combat above all else as the way to contribute to our society. Were I to best the mighty prince of Asgard and his new companions in battle, then I would forever be praised for my combat abilities.”

 

“In case I didn’t know enough to be sure that you people are crazy.”

 

“Come now my friend, does not your world have its own quirks and foibles? According to Thor, your world might punish you for agreeing to be mine, whereas such a thing has never crossed the mind of any good Asgardian.”

 

Clint’s mind blanked out at the use of “mine,” and without thought he found himself twitching the knife away from the bastard’s throat and ramming it in to the vulnerable flesh between his trapezius and shoulder. The guy had the stones not to scream at the pain, but instinct forced him to buck up his hips with enough force to throw Clint off. If Clint hadn’t been scrambling to get himself the hell out of the way of an Asgardian fist, he would’ve cackled at how quickly the guy’s plans to seduce him had gone out the window. Natasha had once literally shoved the stiletto point of her shoe into a man’s balls and he had still followed her around the entire night like a puppy dog. (Not that Clint was stupid enough to think he could compete with Natasha in the field of seducing people, but seriously, this guy must not have actually wanted him that bad.)

 

Clint took about three seconds to backflip out of the bed when the bedroom door burst open. He’d been expecting Tasha to come running to his rescue, but instead Mjolnir came smashing through the door and barreled straight into the other guy’s chest. Behind the furious hammer came Tasha and Thor, spilling over one another. Nat put herself between Clint and the man on the bed, shoving Clint out the door without taking her eyes off the threat.

 

Her shoving didn’t work very well though, because Thor just stood in the doorway, dumbfounded. The sheets were covered in blood that seeped from between the fingers the bastard had clenched at this shoulder. A quick look said none of that blood came from Clint, and Thor stumbled out, “Did you stab him?”

 

“Bastard turned up in my bed. Damn right I stabbed him. He should be grateful I went for his shoulder and not his throat.”

 

“Remind me never to try and snuggle with you, Barton.” Stark joked from behind Thor. “Hey, Point Break, wanna let Barton loose?”

 

“But, you _stabbed_ him.” Thor looked at Clint like he couldn’t understand what had possessed him to do such a thing.

 

“What should I have done?” Clint tossed his arms out in fury, and Tasha elbowed him in the gut to remind him that he was supposed to be safely tucked away behind her, not garnering attention.

 

“You are correct that he should have consulting you about who you wish to stand as your champion and he should have confronted them in the ring. But… but you _stabbed_ him for violating the rules of courtship.”

 

“Maybe now everyone will know that I’m a rule-abiding kind of guy.” Clint snapped off, “Shut up, Stark,” before the man had the chance to comment. “But if everyone is going to abide by these rules, you have to tell me what in the hell they are.”

 

“They’re a warrior culture, Barton.” With that gift of his, Coulson had managed to press Thor towards the bed to fuss over the wounded Asgardian as much as he liked, just so long as he contained the threat at the same time. The Avengers had been backed away from the door and Coulson flanked Tasha’s other side, forming a two-agent and demigod wall in between Clint and the bastard who’d turned up in his bed. (Under different circumstances he might’ve been irritated that they thought he couldn’t fend for himself.)

 

“Apparently Asgardian tradition tends to prefer combat as the means to secure the affections of a Valkyrie. And almost every warrior in Asgard has made it clear that they plan on keeping with tradition.”

 

“And tradition means turning up in my bed without permission?”

 

“No,” Thor objected. “That is a violation of the standards of pursuit. His behavior might have been forgiven if you were a Valkyrie with an established reputation who made it clear that you preferred to be pursed in such a matter, but no, for him to appear in this way is unacceptable.”

 

“What manner should he have appeared in?”

 

Thor was a little busy glowering, so Coulson took back the explanations. “It seems there are runic circles in both the training grounds and the main hall we were in last night. The circles are enchanted to allow combat without fear of doing irreparable harm to either party. The circle’s magic keeps tracks of every blow struck, but prevents any actual injury from occurring. If the spell decides that you’ve struck a killing blow, or enough blows to accumulate to that, then the loser is removed from the circle.”

 

“Uh huh. So this bastard had had enough sense to challenge me inside the circle he wouldn’t have gotten himself stabbed?”

 

“Something like that, yes.” Coulson absolutely did not smile, but Clint knew he wanted to.

 

“He wouldn’t have challenged you,” Natasha explained. “Tradition dictates that a Valkyrie choose from amongst her companions to stand as her representatives. The champions weed through the lesser challengers.”

 

Clint mulled on that for a moment, his lack of sleep and the utter absurdity of this situation were enough to give him some distance. Distance that was enough to give him a plan. “Right. So, to get to me, people have to make it through my champions?”

 

With the sixth sense that must of come from navigating childhood conversations with Loki, Thor knew the question was directed at him. “Yes.”

 

“And this idiot only thought turning up in my bed was a good idea because I didn’t have anyone listed as a champion, right?”

 

“Some people will still be fools.” Thor gave the guy in question a little shake. “But yes, most will have the sense to leave you be until they have proven themselves worthy of your attention.”

 

“Perfect. Where are the Warriors Three?”


	7. Chapter 7

For a bunch of people who seemed to value warriors so much, these Asgardians had shitty spatial awareness. Cap smashed open the doors to the great hall and more Asgardians jumped than junior agents did when Steve entered the mess hall the same way. For the most part Steve liked to sneak in and out of rooms to avoid being stared at, but something about a man turning up in Clint’s bed without his permission seemed to have irritated the Cap’s delicate sensibilities. Since that was working in Clint’s favor, he wasn’t going to remind Steve that no matter what these Asgardians thought about his prior lives: Clint Barton was not a girl.

 

(Not that women weren’t completely capable of defending themselves. Because Clint would never think that. Natasha would strike him stone dead if she knew that anything even remotely resembling that thought had ever crossed Clint’s mind. But seriously. Clint wasn’t [insert whatever person/character/thing/segment of society you thought needed protection here] and Clint wasn’t that. But still, it was good of the Cap to be offended on his behalf.)

 

The rest of the Avengers came along behind in descending order of their ability to swagger, and poor, hangdog Thor came along at the end of the party with the idiot who’d violated Clint’s personal space tossed over his shoulder. (You could tell that Thor had really wanted the Avengers first trip to Asgard to go better than this.)

 

But still, Thor hauled the idiot to one of the healers and let him drop to the table with a thunk. The room waited for Thor to explain what had happened in the barest terms possible before they erupted into whispers.

 

Out of the corner of his eye Clint saw Coulson approach the Warriors Three, informing them in a subdued whisper that Clint wanted all three of them to be the first he fought in the ring. Somewhere along the way Thor had told the rest of the Avengers drunken stories about how his three most trusted companions were among the best warriors in Asgard, though there were some locals with a few millenniums more experience who could defeat them. Clint was all right with that since the number of people who could beat the three of them had to be less than the _everybody_ who was currently planning to stalk him.

 

When Coulson delivered the news Fandral and Volstagg reared back in surprise (though given Volstagg’s size, his rearing was a little more dramatic). Coulson ignored their reactions just long enough to tell the Lady Sif that she wasn’t being excluded from the fight because they doubted her ability, but instead because they knew she had a good history with the Valkyries and Clint didn’t want to get in the way of that.

 

Clint thought the lady would take that with the same pleasant smile she bestowed on Thor when she thought he was being an idiot. Only this time her lips puckered in displeasure and Coulson leaned in tight to her ear to whisper something else. Something that Clint couldn’t guess and couldn’t lip read because Coulson turned at just the right angle to keep his lips out of Clint’s line of sight. When Coulson pulled back Sif had a teasing smile that managed to twist Clint’s stomach when she ran a steady hand along Phil’s forearm. Clint had done enough ops with Natasha to know that Sif had touched him with just enough pressure that Phil would be able to feel it through the fabric.

 

Thank heavens for Fandral, who completely ignored the moment that Phil and Sif were having, a moment that made Clint wonder what in the hell Phil had gotten up to last night while Clint was trying not to have a breakdown. Fandral ducked his perfectly-coiffed head unnecessarily close to Coulson and murmured something along the lines of, “Thor has told us that Clinton does not wish to be treated as the Valkyrie he once was, so none of us had intended to strive for his hand.” Or at least, Clint figured that interpretation was close enough to be truth. Lip-reading the old-school sentence structure that Asgardians preferred wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.

 

Fandral seemed to mull about whatever motivation Coulson gave them—his lips still securely out of Clint’s line of sight—but Volstagg still seemed a little nervous about accidentally squishing Clint in the middle of the fight. The third warrior though, Hogun, he had caught Clint’s eye from across the room. Clint gave him a sharp nod of approval, and Hogun offered Coulson his immediate acceptance. That was enough for his other two warriors to cave and agree as well. Clint waited for Coulson’s signal, then shouldered his bow and strode up to ring.

 

The area set aside for battle was demarcated by a circle of thickly carved letters that a few post-New Mexico History Channel specials had taught Clint were called Runes. Earth considered them a method of writing, and Loki’s memory taught Clint they were best used in magic. Frigga’s father had laid down this particular circle of runes as a wedding present, imbuing them with all the protections that Coulson had mentioned. And seriously, a magical circle so soldiers didn’t have to worry about restraining themselves while they sparred? He hoped for Jane’s sake the Asgardians had evolved to giving people things like books for a wedding present. Or a coffee maker.

 

Clint had always preferred keeping himself quiet and letting other people (aka: Tasha) do the attention grabbing. But this time he called on years of undercover work and all his circus showmanship to pretend like the abrupt silence wasn’t making him uncomfortable. He pulled a handful of arrows from his quiver and tossed the mostly-full quiver into Stark’s waiting hands. (Some of those arrowheads liked to explode, and Stark was the kind of man who’d have no objections setting the whole damn thing off if he had to.) Clint strode into the circle and laid out his arrows in an even row, then rested his bow over his knees and stayed down in his preparatory crouch. He knew he didn’t look like much in this position, like a kid crouched on the balls of his feet just hanging out and waiting for someone else do something worth watching. Clint might’ve set himself up to stretch the fight out a little bit, given the folks a bit more of a show, but he wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving to anyone of Asgardian stock today.

 

Hogun stepped in to the circle without pause, but Volstaff and Fandral hung behind for a moment, like they were waiting for Clint to waive them off. Volstagg leaned in to Coulson and hissed, “Is it Clinton’s plan to do so poorly in battle that no one will be willing to pursue him? Because that will not work. It might reduce numbers, but both he and his past are too appealing for everyone to be dissuaded.”

 

Clint would never ceased to be amazed at Coulson’s ability to look at demigods like they were idiots, and to have the people in question actually listen to him. The two Asgardians heaved out a sigh, but they stepped into the circle’s bounds and took their positions beside their friend.

 

The whole room erupted into whispers that grew into complaints that grew into accusations of dishonor. Clint was pretty sure Thor was going to have to get involved in calming everybody down, but Idunn stepped up to the circle’s edge and the room stilled. Clint could see it in their eyes that most of them were expecting an All-Mother-style scolding, but she took in the scene before her and without so much as a glance at Clint intoned the words Tasha had explained to him were the formal beginning for this sort of thing. “Clinton Frances Barton, called Hawkeye, of the Avengers of Midgard, formerly and once again to be known as Heidir of Valkyrie, do you accept the combined courtship challenge of Hogun the Grim, Volstagg the Valiant, and Fandral the Dashing?”

 

“I do.” Clint appreciated that Bruce took the time to glower at Tony before he had the chance to make any of the requisite jokes about Clint saying “I do.” Idunn repeated the same to the Warriors Three, only beefing up their titles and reducing Clint down to his alleged identity as a Valkyrie—and he only kept his mouth shut because Tasha gave him a glare that said she found this whole thing stupid in the first place, and if he lost his temper with one of the rulers of Asgard she was not going to save him.

 

The Three gave their assent, and Idunn floated her hand over the circle’s barrier in the Asgardian equivalent of dropping the flag at a race. The runes flashed white to tell all and sundry that they’d engaged, and Clint went for his bow. Fandral and Volstagg lunged in perfect time, each going for an opposing side of Clint. Fandral was lean and fast, and his sword came up on Clint in a blur. Things might have actually gotten hairy if Fandral hadn’t pulled back his sword to deliver the blow instead of just an easy thrust, but as it was, Clint sent his first arrow at the same lips Fandral had pressed too close to Coulson’s ear in a whisper about how Clint couldn’t defeat them. Both the arrow and Fandral vanished the moment before the bolt struck.

 

Volstagg wasn’t nearly as fast as his younger companion, and it was the work of a moment to grab another arrow and send it for his eye.

 

Hogan had the sense to come at Clint from above while his companions were trying to strike and being forced outside the circle before they could. Clint went for another arrow and ducked into a roll, avoiding the smash of Hogun’s mace. Hogan gave it an awkward golf kind of swing, and since he’d gotten close, Clint did him the honor of sending the arrow to his throat.

 

And well, that was it.

 

In under thirty seconds Clint had taken down three of Asgard’s best warriors. Which really, had been the plan. But based off the slack-jawed expressions of almost everyone in the room, they hadn’t expected him to pull it off. Clint gathered up his remaining arrows, and plucked the three he’d used from Idunn’s waiting hands. He gave her his best attempt that Steve’s, “Aw-schucks, ma’am” grin, but it wasn’t very convincing.

 

He dragged the silence out as long as he could, thinking his most Stark-like thoughts to help him get the timing right. Clint had never been great with silence when it didn’t lead to shooting though. Safely outside the bounds of the circle he raised his voice and announced, “So, here’s the thing. I get that you all have these Asgardian traditions about Valkyrie, which, ya know, respect for other cultures and all that shit. But I’m not going to spend my vacation with all of you bastards chasing me around and picking fights. I have no problem stabbing every last one of you, but Thor doesn’t like it when I damage his people.”

 

Clint re-shouldered his quiver and straightened his spine to look over the whole room, all of whom were still watching him like they weren’t entirely sure what was going on. “So here’s how I’m gonna thin the herd. You wanna get a chance at me, you have to go through them first.” Clint nodded at the Warriors Three, two of which were pink in embarrassment at their loss.

 

“But you defeated them already!” Someone from the crowd called out.

 

“Yup. And if they can beat you, that means I can defeat you too. So I’m not gonna waste my time fighting people who aren’t worth the trouble.”

 

“If we defeat the Warriors Three we will be granted the chance to woo you through combat?” This was another voice, and Clint was really tempted to demand that if anyone wanted to ask questions they had to suck it up and actually ask them face to face rather than this shouting out from the back of the crowd shit.

 

“Nope. You beat the Three you get the chance to actually face my champions. You beat them, then we’ll talk.”

 

Things got a little… crazy after that. Asgardians started lining up for the chance to get in the ring, debating with themselves whether they had to defeat all Warriors Three together, or if they could do it one at a time, or even three on three. Clint trusted that the Warriors’ pride would drive them to make this as difficult as possible on the suitors, and anyone who slipped through, Natasha would kill them stone dead.

 

With Tasha at his side and Coulson watching their backs, the Avengers and company left the hall, intending to split up and do some extra sneaking, but things could never be that easy.

 

“Clinton.”

 

Idunn had followed them from the hall, more than a few of the inhabitants closely watching their conversation like they weren’t sure whether they wanted to be jealous of her or of him. Which, somewhere underneath the low-grade irritation that burned underneath his skin, Clint could understand. Idunn was beautiful. While Frigga made him feel about an inch tall and Gaea made Clint want to reach for his bow, Idunn had smiling eyes, like she was a beat away from sharing a spectacular joke. Though there was a real chance that the joke would be at your expense. According to Tasha’s sit-rep, Idunn was called The Ever-Young, and today, with her black hair pulled back into haphazard braid and her dress embroidered with flowers, Clint could see it.

 

She looked sweet and harmless, like a girl who was nothing but curious about Clint’s concerns, trying to understand. But when Tasha pulled back her hair and wiped away her makeup, she looked the same. And her wide-eyed, innocent expression had been the last thing too many men had seen for Clint to fall for it.

 

Strangely enough, it was Stark and Banner who seemed to understand. (Probably because both men had suffered that same deception from Natasha.) When it looked like Idunn was going to float straight up to Clint, Bruce and Tony put themselves in the way. Idunn grinned at them like they were charming and murmured, “I mean him no harm.”

 

“Our apologies, Lady Idunn, but we’ve discovered that Asgard’s version of harm and our version aren’t the same thing.” Tony and his bright smile bore the brunt of being polite, which seemed practical since Bruce looked about one more conversation away from just tearing the palace down around their ears and making a run for the Bifrost. (Prisons, no matter how gilded, did things to Bruce’s blood pressure.)

 

“And for that, I do apologize. I would have preferred that the circumstances of our first meeting be more genial than these. With that in mind, I thought I might show you one of my most treasured places for relaxation.”

 

“Why?” Bruce snapped.

 

Idunn quirked an eyebrow like she found Bruce amusing, and really, that just wasn’t going to go anyplace good. “Why would I wish to make amends for the treatment you have suffered at our hands?”

 

“You didn’t seem to be in the mood for making amends last night. What changed your opinion in so short an amount of time?”

 

She tilted her head and looked to Clint, obvious about how she was debating with herself about which answer to give. “I want Clinton to choose to remain in Asgard. After the events of last night and this morning, I believe letting him partake of some small piece of Asgard’s beauty would be conducive to that goal.” It sounded honest, but at this point Clint didn’t trust his readings of anyone on this damn planet. His own perceptions of her warred with the traces of Loki’s memory left behind in his mind, and Loki had appreciated Idunn for her stealth, though he thought she lacked vision.

 

When no one snapped at her, Idunn seemed to take their silence for agreement and ushered them down the hall behind her. When Thor figured out where they were going a bright smile broke across his face, and everyone in the group settled a little. Some part of their collective conscious was worried that they were getting dragged into some unfortunate version of Asgardian fun, but Thor’s smile calmed them. Probably more than it should given Thor’s idea of a good time.

 

Some of the young people who followed Idunn wherever she went swept open a pair of ostentatious double doors leading to spiral stairs that wound up and up and up. Tony grumbled something about an elevator—which Clint was pretty sure they’d passed a raised platform just inside the door that was meant to be some kind of transporter—but the view was worth the trouble. The tower they were climbing was lined with windows, showing off the increasingly dramatic view of Asgard stretched out below them. Clint was pretty sure the stairs had to be enchanted, because every window showed them dozens of feet higher than they actually were, and they’d only been climbing for about three stories.

 

Idunn’s helpers swung open another set of doors at the top of the stairs, and suddenly the whole thing was worth it. The smooth stone walls that made up the rest of the palace had given way to wood, actual _living_ wood. The room was the top of tree. That last moment where the branches forked away from one another and shot out into leaves. Which just so happened to be the place on a tree that Clint liked to make into a nest.

 

He could see the stone ringing around and through the thick branches, helping the building preserve something like its shape. But the ceiling was blue sky and swirling clouds peeking through the leaves, and in the midst of the uneven, but perfectly-closed floor of branches, there was a pool. The water was cloudy, keeping you from seeing just how deep in might go, but the mirror-smooth surface was interrupted by floating golden orbs with glowing flames caged between leaves of beaten glass. Even better, up from the water there was the occasional thrust of branch, suggesting that there were probably benches somewhere down there.

 

Clint tried not to be impressed, but that was hard to manage at the sight before him. Of course, when Idunn turned to him with a pleased smile and said, “Given your chosen name, I thought you might appreciate the aesthetic,” he managed a disinterested shrug. Idunn didn’t buy it, but she let the conversation go to waive her followers around the room. With their magic, they pulled platters of food, fluffy towels, and various sponges, soaps, and alcohol from the nothingness. They deposited everything on the various tree branches around the pool, then slipped from the room like they’d never been there in the first place. (A few of them lingered near Clint like they wanted to stick around for more orders to fetch and carry, but Natasha glowered them away. Although, when they scampered away she turned the glower on Clint, and he lost a moment trying to figure out what he’d missed.)

 

“Call for me when you are finished, and my servants will return to help you prepare for tonight’s feast.” Idunn gave Thor and Clint a polite bow of the head before she slipped down the stairs in a swirl of skirt.

 

“Feast?” Clint croaked, but no one else seemed surprised. The Avengers had already ranged around the room, with Tony going straight for the goblets of mead and Bruce sampling a bowl of apples. Tasha was at the door, listening to be sure that Idunn and her people had actually gone down the stairs and weren’t lurking in wait to eavesdrop on them. Clint had expected Cap to join her while Coulson paced the edge of the room to check in his own paranoid way that things weren’t about to collapse underneath them, but Cap was just standing there staring.

 

Not at the pool, or at the food, but at Thor. Considering that Darcy and Jane were doing the same thing, Clint didn’t understand why it took his brain so long to realize that Thor was standing right next to him, stripping.

 

Cap and Jane both started to turn red as Thor dumped his undershirt into the growing pile of cloth and armor, and he started working on the ties of his pants. Considering Darcy was the only person who had noticed and seemed capable of speaking—and what she had to say about Thor’s nudity would be hilarious but unhelpful—Clint asked, “Uh Thor, whatcha doing?”

 

“Do Midgardians not bathe in the nude?”

 

And that, well that got everyone else’s attention. “Yeah, but not usually when there are other people around.”

 

“Which is a logic of your people that I do not understand. There is beauty in all creatures, beauty that is only all too easy to find amongst out company, what cause would we have to not bathe together and forge even deeper bonds of fellowship?” Thor dropped his trousers without any hesitation, and really, the guy didn’t have anything to be ashamed of. He was a freaking Norse deity though, so it made more than a little bit of sense.

 

While the rest of the room either stared or tried really hard not to stare, Thor shrugged and stepped over the pool’s edge and into the water. Clint’s guess about underwater benches was right—since the water only came up to Thor’s knees. With another step he was up to his waist and whatever it was that made the water cloudy made it so you couldn’t see more than a few inches beneath the water’s surface. Every step he took towards the center of the pool raised the water level, getting all the way up to his neck until he found the branch he seemed to be looking for and sprawled back like an indolent king.

 

Clint would’ve laughed if Tasha hadn’t started peeling away her layers, though she was careful to leave them nearer the water’s edge to be there if trouble came calling.

 

“Widow!” Steve squeaked, and really, the kid looked so red that Clint was a little worried his head might explode. Given that Natasha was bent over at the waist, peeling down her suit in the most beguiling way she could manage, Clint thought another head might be thinking about exploding as well. (Steve could stand up for truth, justice, and virtue all he wanted, but Clint was pretty sure there wasn’t a soul alive who could turn down Tasha if she was in the mood to make you want her.)

 

“I spent last night being sweated on by Asgardian leaches who don’t know how to hold their liquor. I want a bath.”

 

“But—”

 

“No one is making you take off your clothes, Steve. I’m sure a gentleman like you can climb in in his boxers.” Tasha managed to make ‘gentleman’ sound like a dirty word. Stark laughed and stripped of his shirt. If possible, the sight of Tony’s naked chest did more to Steve than all of Tasha’s exposed curves. (Like Clint, Tony was a fan of roaming around without sleeves, the rest of him being shared only in teasing glimpses around the arc reactor.) Bruce shrugged, like the SHIELD agents, probably having done much worse in much more mixed company than this.

 

Clint dropped naked into the pool with enough splash to get Thor soaked, and the Asgardian cackled at him before diving at Clint and trying to dunk him in that oldest of best friend traditions. Their roughhousing was enough that both Jane and Darcy were able to slip into the water mostly unnoticed—not that Darcy cared, but Jane did, hence the both of them still wearing something more than nothing. Bruce and Tony came after them, one with a bowl of fruit and his boxers, while the other had nothing but a pitcher of mead.

 

Cap though, Cap just stood there fully clothed and blushing like an idiot.

 

Things might have been a little bit easier on him if Tasha wasn’t standing there, naked as the day she was born, one foot tapping in impatience and her arms crossed like she was about to scold him. Clint didn’t know why, but he was expecting a speech, a lecture on warrior bonding and modern social mores, but Steve flicked his eyes around the room, took a fortifying gulp of mead, and started to strip.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Natasha found one of the underwater benches and sprawled back like one of the dirty Renaissance paintings that Coulson liked to drag Clint to museums to see and act like they were classy. Clint thought he was full of shit, but Coulson wasn’t the kind of guy to pretend that naked ladies were anything other than what they were. If he had been dragging Clint out to look at porn, he’d say so. Either way, Tasha sprawled back and pulled Clint out of Thor’s headlock and straight into her lap. They settled down that way, with Clint leaning back between Tasha’s thighs like she was the bench.

 

She flicked out one deceptively delicate foot and pushed aside one of golden orbs floating along the water’s surface, looping her calf over Clint’s. He had his other leg kicked up on the pool’s edge, partly to get that good stretch along the back of his leg, but mainly so he’d have the leverage to spring the hell out of the water if trouble came. (Tasha got to be behind him because her hair was long enough to conceal a few throwing blades, while Clint’s was barely long enough to count as hair.) Clint was careful to keep his tattooed arm under the water so he could pretend for a moment that things were normal. He flopped his head back to Tasha’s shoulder and closed his eyes to feel the warm trickle of sunlight coming through the leaves.

 

Darcy dropped her head to Tony’s shoulder, completely unconcerned that he was stark naked beneath the water. “Now, I don’t want to participate, because I’m pretty sure that I don’t have the stamina to keep up with either of them, but don’t you just want to _watch_ them have sex? Like, it must be the dirtiest, beautifulest, flexiblest sex that anybody ever had.”

 

“Is she talking about us?” Clint murmured without bothering to open his eyes.

 

“I’d ask who in the hell else could she be talking about, but we are surrounded by some disgustingly good looking people. Myself included.” Clint smirked at Stark’s teasing. He somehow managed to always sound like the smuggest bastard Clint had ever met, but Stark’s tone meant he genuinely appreciated the pretty in the group without thinking it was a threat to his own. Though, Stark was a pretty bastard—and a genius besides—so Clint couldn’t imagine a world where Stark was going to indulge in self-doubt about anything other than his interpersonal relationships.

 

“I know we’re all little distracted by the partial nudity, so if this isn’t the right time, and I don’t… if you’re uncomfortable you don’t have to answer, but I was wondering, how did the two of you end up at SHIELD?” Bruce managed to stutter out.

 

Clint didn’t know what Bruce had been expecting, but Coulson snorting, “She hog-tied him and left him on Director Fury’s front porch,” was probably not it.

 

Somehow Coulson had ended up outside the pool, taking off his jacket, tie, and shoes as the only concessions he was willing to make to the general state of undress. Tony had looked ready to protest when he realized that Coulson was still on dry land, but the agent had replied that one of them ought to remain armed and on watch while the rest of them re-enacted the first scene of a porno.

 

(Tony had laughed at the word “porno” crossing Coulson’s posh lips, and Steve had sunk all the way under the water like if he tried hard enough he might be able to stay down until swimming time was over. The poor kid had curled into a ball only to find himself face to breast with Darcy. The subsequent flailing had been pretty spectacular.)

 

Bruce leaned forward ready to ask Coulson to repeat himself because there was no way he could’ve heard him right. But Coulson had that dry smile that meant he knew he’d just rearranged your world and he was proud of it. The rest of the Avengers exchanged glances and Tony asked, “Why is it that I don’t think that’s a euphemism for anything?”

 

“Because it’s not. She literally tied me up and left me there. Or at least, that’s what people tell me. I was unconscious at the time.”

 

Clint sunk a little deeper in to Natasha’s embrace, tempted to leave it there. It was his story, so Tasha would leave it up to him to decide if he wanted to share or not. And he wasn’t, at least, until Stark kicked out his leg in a feeble attempt at splashing. “Come on! You can’t stop there! How is the world did the two of you get together in the first place?”

 

As if the Avenger’s lives hadn’t taken enough twists and turns in the last few weeks, Natasha started to giggle. Tony and Bruce shared a look like they thought the water had to be contaminated with something. Clint rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother trying to get away from Tasha. (She wouldn’t have let him go, and he didn’t mind the story as much as he once had.) “I made bad choices when I was a kid, alright?”

 

“What kind of bad mistakes?”

 

“I fell in with a bad crowd.”

 

“A bad crowd that, what? Jacked cars? Robbed banks?”

 

“Thought they were clever enough to be assassins,” Natasha interrupted. “Specifically, they thought they were capable of killing me.”

 

Even Jane, who had only the information about Natasha’s background that common sense provided her, cringed at the thought. “So why is Clint not dead?” Darcy asked.

 

“I told you, my ass is spectacular.” Tasha pinched him, and he did her the courtesy of jumping like he hadn’t expected it.

 

“Because there were certain individuals I expected to be on the other side of the weapon that got that close to killing me, and a seventeen-year-old child was not on that list.”

 

The day Steve Rogers had found out that Natasha had spent her childhood subjected to a watered-down version of the super-soldier serum had not been a good day in Stark Tower. She’d avoided almost any mention of it, partially because Natasha wasn’t one for sharing in the first place, and partially because Steve was a sensitive flower. So to have Natasha so boldly state that Clint had been seventeen at their first meeting, and to have the nearly forty-year-old man he was before them now, was shocking. Instead of the flinch they all knew he was keeping back, Steve smiled. “So you took him home like a puppy?”

 

She gave a long stoke through Clint’s wet hair. “Best pet I ever had.”

 

“So you taught him to be a good teenage assassin.” Stark prodded along the story.

 

Clint scoffed. “Please Stark, I was the _best_ teenage assassin.”

 

“So what happened?”

 

“Being the best means you get noticed.”

 

Everyone in the room looked at Coulson, then tried to pretend like it hadn’t been their instinctual reaction. “We weren’t the only people on their trail. Nor were we the worst.” Coulson answered the unasked question.

 

“But why?” Cap asked, and rolled his eyes when Tony and Darcy started giggling and the way that sounded. “Not why wasn’t SHIELD the worst. Why were you being hunted? Was it just the people who usually tracked you as Black Widow?”

 

“Clint is my partner, and the Black Widow isn’t supposed to have a partner.”

 

“And your kill rate skyrocketed.” Coulson added. “Lets not forget that little tidbit.”

 

Clint gave an ineffectual kick of his leg trying to splash Coulson without getting any water on his suit. The last time he’d damaged one of the suits Coulson had made him fill out the reams of paperwork for getting a new one. “It’s not like either of our kill rates were low to begin with.”

 

“So it was a mix of people with a grudge against you as Black Widow, thinking that now you had a weak spot, and people who wanted to employ you?” Steve clarified.

 

“Yes, and it was hard to tell the difference until they got close enough to attack.”

 

“I still have no idea how this led to Clint getting hogtied,” Tony interrupted.

 

Tasha ran her fingers through Clint’s hair, the same motion she’d used to gentle him back when he was young and stupid. “Clint was never meant to be an assassin for hire. His heart has always been too good for that.” Under the water Clint shifted his hand from his belly to stroke up and down the outside of Tasha’s thigh. It wasn’t a sexual touch. It was a reminder that he’d long since forgiven her for what came next.

 

“We spent months on the run, not knowing the difference between client and killer. We were both tired, and Clint wanted out. Not to get away from me, but to have some peace, and maybe kill people who deserved to die rather than those we were being paid to kill.”

 

Darcy, who for all her worldly experience in some areas, looked at them with painfully innocent eyes. “What happened? Did Clint get caught?”

 

“Not caught, kiddo. Let go.” He gave a little squeeze to Tasha’s skin to remind her they were together, and nothing would sever them again. “See, we didn’t know clients from killers, and most of the government agents looked just the same, but there was this one guy in a suit so fancy we thought he had to be a client. Only, people who need to hire a third party to do the killing for them didn’t move like this guy. So we thought maybe we were wrong, maybe he was actually a killer and just the least subtle bastard we’d ever met.”

 

Bruce was the first one to pick up on the implication. He watched Coulson out of the corner of his eye, but the agent didn’t give the satisfaction of a response. He’d heard Clint tell a far more dramatic version of this story to the junior agents too many times to show his interest. Tony wasn’t far behind though, and he whipped around to see Coulson. “You brought them in?”

 

“Once again, Clint was dropped off on Fury’s porch. However, I was tasked with the responsibility to _try_ and bring them in. At the time I assumed it fairly obvious that I worked for the government.”

 

Both Clint and Tasha snorted. Years they’d been with Coulson and they still couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that Coulson had ever once considered that he might look like anything other than the badass that he was. They’d quickly disabused him of that notion and recommended that the next time he wanted a target to recognize his government affiliation he should requisition one of SHIELD’s cheap suits. (A piece of advice that they were pleased to notice he’d followed when he went to debrief Stark for the first time.) Though, neither of them were entirely sure that Coulson had ever actually believed such a thing about himself, but they hadn’t yet gotten a straight answer out of him.

 

“Either way, Nat and I decided that this guy was the one we wanted to talk to, so we holed up in a hotel and made a plan to contact him the next day. Or, that’s what I thought the plan was.”

 

“Holy shit,” Darcy exclaimed. “Natasha drugged you and left you on Fury’s porch? How?”

 

“We picked a posh hotel, which looking back probably should’ve been my first sign that Tasha’s plan wasn’t the one I thought it was.”

 

“She was saying goodbye.” Gentle Jane murmured.

 

“Got it one. It was the best goodbye though. That night I had the best steak and the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.”

 

“Miss Romanoff, did you violate the sacred covenant of fine dining and dose his steak?” Tony demanded, thoroughly affronted on the meal’s behalf.

 

“Why do that when I know that Clint sleeps like the dead after sex?”

 

There was dead silence for a moment, while most everyone in the room was trying to decide if that was actually something they were allowed to comment on or not. Of course, it was Tony who said, “Please tell me Barton didn’t sleep through being hogtied and turned over to SHIELD. Because I will have to readjust everything I thought I knew about his personality.”

 

Clint grabbed one of the floating orbs of light and lobbed it across the pond at Stark’s head. He did it with enough of an arc that Tony could dodge out of the way, but the point stood. “She dosed me after I was asleep, you idiot.”

 

“And turned you over to SHIELD?” Given everyone in the room’s various histories with SHIELD, it was amusing that Darcy was the one who sounded horrified. As far as Clint knew, the worst they’d done to her was Coulson abducting her iPod as part of going through Jane’s research. But still, she was affronted on Clint’s behalf, and though Tasha hadn’t even twitched, Clint knew that something inside her was tensing at the remembrance of leaving him behind.

 

“It was the right thing to do, kid. There was too much heat on our tails to stay together, and if she’d left me on my own I would’ve been dead inside a month. She saved my life, and she gave me the path that I’d always been meant for but was too stupid to see. I woke up strapped to a chair in SHIELD interrogation, and in walked Dread Pirate Fury and the bastard in the too-nice suit.”

 

“And they made you an agent?”

 

Coulson snorted at that one. “Working with the Black Widow is not the same as working with an organization for a cause higher than yourself. He was on SHIELD’s radar, but we fostered him out to another organization to smooth the rough edges.”

 

“Which organization?” Darcy demanded, looking about two seconds away from climbing out of the pool and giving Coulson as intimidating a talking to as she could when wearing wet underwear.

 

It was Steve who answered though. “The Army.” The rest of the group stared at him, but he gave a little shrug that said one Army man always knew another.

 

“Don’t let Coulson kid you. Fury was expecting me to either get myself drummed out of the Army or go AWOL, both of which would violate my contract with SHIELD and then they’d send Coulson after me again, only this time he’d actually have to follow that kill order.”

 

“You were supposed to kill him?” Jane squeaked.

 

“Them.” Coulson corrected. “Though Fury knew full well that no single agent would’ve been able to take down both The Black Widow and Hawkeye. That was my order on the books to satisfy the demands of the WSC.”

 

“Yup, but I did better in the Army than they were expecting. Fury spent six years playing nice with the Army, bouncing me back and forth between missions for both them and SHIELD. It was good though. Any time someone got a little too close to figuring out that I was the same archer who’d been partners with the Black Widow—which, let’s face it, there’s not a lot of archers out there—Fury would ship me off to get extra training with the Army until the interest died down. That’s how I ended up a Ranger. And an officer. And got my GED.” (And his bachelors, though that was more Coulson assigning him paperwork that Clint thought was just Coulson trying to make him more effective, and not him duping Clint into getting educated.)

 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tony cackled. “Army officer? Does this mean you should be saluting Steve every time he comes in the room?”

 

Clint smirked. “If you wanna get technical about it, I have more time in rank, so Steve should be the one saluting me.”

 

“Wait, what?” Steve looked horrified that he might have actually been failing to live up to his duty all these months.

 

“Captain Barton. 75th Ranger Regiment.” Coulson announced. The bastard had come to Clint’s graduation from OTS and clapped so hard that Clint had blushed. (Tasha had been there, under a blonde wig and fake nose. Clint had known it was her, but knew acknowledging she was there could’ve gotten her killed, or worse. So he hadn’t once looked in her direction. But later, she told him that Coulson’s enthusiasm for Clint was what convinced her to start thinking about SHIELD as an actual option.)

 

Steve started to sputter, and Tony started to laugh, and from there things just devolved into teasing. Thor wanted someone to explain to him the concept of “hogtie,” while Darcy pouted that Clint didn’t need/want her to be irritated on his behalf. Coulson made another slow circuit of the room, avoiding all the food they’d been offered but letting his mouth tick up into that little not-a-grin he used when he wanted to laugh but thought it would disrupt his image.

 

Unfortunately for Coulson, Tony got distracted by his motion and asked, “Have you two seen Agent Agent in anything other than a suit?”

 

They all stopped talking and looked at Coulson, cocking their heads to the side to try and imagine Coulson in anything that wasn’t a suit, and Clint could tell from most of their scrunched up expressions that they were failing miserably. “Of course,” Tasha grinned. “It’s never been a sexy naked though.”

 

Clint snorted. “Definitely not sexy. The first time I saw him without a shirt was while I was trying to stop the bleeding on a gut shot.”

 

“Once you’ve had a person nearly bleed out on you it’s difficult for their nudity to stimulate the kind of hind brain reaction you’re talking about.” Tasha added.

 

“Once,” Clint piled on with a laugh. “We had an op go south and we got stuck in a safe house in Norway, in winter, with no heat.”

 

“Please tell me this is going where I think it’s going.” Tony teased.

 

“Damn right. Three of us had to strip down and share a bed for body heat.”

 

“ _That_ sounds like the start of a porno.”

 

“It does. But there are few things in the world that suck more than getting a boner when that boner might get all of you killed.”

 

Tony started to laugh so hard that he almost fell off his bench and went for an actual swim. Tasha wrapped her arms around his chest and squeezed Clint back to her a little tighter. He had Tasha at his back, Coulson watching his front, and a room full of friends to share a story with. Clint grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit that Bruce had set to float in his effort to save Tony from drowning. He took a massive bite with his tattooed arm and settled back against Tasha, letting the sunlight and laughter wash over him and make it a good day.


	9. Chapter 9

Well, Tasha looked good. And Darcy’s rack was excellent. And Steve’s shoulder-to-waist ratio did things to Clint’s self esteem. And Tony had the confidence to wear whatever the hell he wanted. And Jane was too sweet not to look beautiful. And Coulson looked good in everything—the bastard.

 

But Clint, Clint looked like Robin Hood.

 

The Avengers had spent longer in the water than they should have, but they were too relaxed to care. When they were done Thor had called for Idunn, whose minions had ushered them all into changing rooms that hadn’t been along the staircase when they’d come up. Clint didn’t think about that too hard because when he did, the Loki part of his brain actually tried to explain, and he couldn’t handle that. But the women had been shuffled off into one room, and the men into another, and somehow Idunn had decided that agreeing to take a bath translated to agreeing to a whole new, Asgard appropriate wardrobe.

 

Not that any archer in the world ever felt _bad_ about looking like Robin Hood, but still, Clint did not feel like this was a step up from his pajamas. The material was fine, with leather and armor well enough made that he was pretty sure that they’d be able to deflect blows. Whoever had crafted the outfits had done their research, giving every Avenger something like their usual gear, though some had chosen not to wear it. Coulson and Stark had foregone any clothing changes, while Tasha, Jane, Darcy, and Bruce had adopted their new outfits. (Though Bruce had done it mostly because his new pants were stretchy.) Clint had wanted to stay just as he was, despite his current lack of shoes, but he didn’t need the significant look from Coulson to tell him he should dress the part.

 

His armor followed the same V pattern of his regular uniform, and it cut off at the shoulders so he could fire unobstructed. But when your armor was meant to block people who carried around swords, it was stupid to leave your arms bare, and they’d given him shooting gloves that stretched up to his elbows. Gloves that repeated the same pattern as the ink on his skin. They’d tried to give him a new bow, and it was all Clint could do not to snap the damn thing for the presumption.

 

The party was already underway when the Avengers arrived, with the long tables full of drinking guests arranged around the ring where the Warriors Three were still going strong. Since Hogun and Volstagg were doing their own drinking at a table while Fandral danced around his opponent like they were waltzing, Clint was pretty sure they’d set up a rotation for which one was on attacking duty, and if one of them managed to lose, then the victor still had to go through the other two. Sif watched the whole thing, equally mocking both her own friends and their opponents. She looked like she was enjoying herself, but she had that gleam in her eye that Tasha got when she was waiting for the right moment to stab someone.

 

Clint’s entrance was met with raucous cheering and more than a few raised goblets. He leaned forward to Thor and murmured, “I set them up to fight the Warriors Three, aren’t they supposed to hate me now?”

 

Thor slung an arm around Clint’s shoulder and pulled him tight. “Songs will be sung of this day, Clinton. You outwitted all your suitors and made for the greatest battle we have had amongst ourselves in centuries. They are proud to have so clever a Valkyrie to be fighting for.”

 

Clint was forcibly settled at the table in a spot between Coulson and Tasha. He tried to snap that he was capable of defending himself, but he knew damn well that it wasn’t about them protecting him, it was about them stopping him from putting an arrow in anyone who might actually die from the wound. He simultaneously thought it was good of them, and complete bullshit. He hadn’t decided which emotion was going to win the day.

 

Though, when a bundle of giggling girls stumbled over to him and made like they were going to take turns trying to flirt with him, his low-grade irritation gave way to panic. Clint had never been particularly good with… well, _words_. Natasha had told him that she wanted to sleep with him by cutting through his belt, and it said quite a bit about Clint’s sexual past that Tasha had been one of the subtle ones. He was fine with just being told that someone wanted him, but the process of being chased still did things to his blood pressure that a swan dive off a building couldn’t manage to do.

 

Natasha scared the girls away with her mere presence, and between her and Coulson, things were fine. Dinner was good, the fights were entertaining, and Clint and Bruce divided between them the same apples that they’d both devoured earlier in the pool. Clint got to watch the Three bludgeon their way through every challenger they came across, and Tasha glowered at anyone who had the stones to actually try and approach him.

 

Really, the whole thing was fine, right up until the moment the bastard from that morning got dragged over to Clint’s table by the scruff of his neck. The boy in question was decked out in armor that had been polished until it gleamed, his hair slicked back like he hadn’t spent the day with healers patching up his shoulder. The man hauling him over to Clint’s table though, for all they looked painfully similar, they couldn’t have been more night and day. While the kid had taken care to coif and preen so people might forget that he’d let a Midgardian get the jump on him, the guy bringing him didn’t give a shit what people thought. His armor wasn’t dented, but it was worn, a testimony that the guy had actually used it for something other than these ceremonial scuffles.

 

The man strode across the room with confidence in his step, and light glinting off the silver he let grow unfettered through his blond hair while he dragged the boy along behind. He came to a stop across the table from Clint, completely ignoring the warning glowers Tasha was sending his way. As if the guy wasn’t startling enough, he dropped into an actual bow, when everyone else had been greeting Clint with nothing but nods. “I offer you my greetings, Valkyrie Clinton. I am Earl Ryalt, and I bring to you my son, Aelle. He would like to offer to you his most sincere apologies for his behavior this morning.”

 

Aelle, apparently the name of the idiot, glowered at his father then stared at his feet, like they could protect him. Ryalt shook the boy and shoved him a step forward so he jolted in to the edge of the table. The movement forced him to look up, and he muttered out something that sounded kind of like an apology.

 

Ryalt smacked his son upside the back of the head. Aelle took long enough to scowl at his father, but still turned to Clint and put on his most pathetic expression. “I apologize for violating the terms of courting.”

 

It really wasn’t that convincing an apology, and Clint was tempted to make the kid do it over and over again until he believed him. But Ryalt rolled his eyes and gave Clint a conciliatory, ‘What can you do?’ shrug. Instead, Clint said, “Yeah kid, we’re good. But I’d keep this in mind the next time you touch somebody without their permission. The next person probably won’t be as careful about where they stab you.”

 

All the blood drained out of Aelle’s face and he scurried off to the sound of his father’s laughter. “All my years of scolding him and it turns out that all I needed to do was stab him to bring him in line. I do apologize for his actions. My son is impetuous and smug, but there is potential in him. I’m afraid that his mother has focused on that potential and spoiled him with it rather than using it to craft him into something better. I will not let his violation of protocols go unpunished, I assure you, but at this point I doubt the punishment will do any good. He will speak ill of you to all his agemates, which under normal circumstances I would try to prevent. But given that you seem to disdain this entire process, I believe letting him run his mouth might be the best penance I can provide you. At least the number of suitors will be cut down because of his bad behavior.”

 

Clint tried not to encourage any of these people to talk to him, but he couldn’t stop his snicker at that. Out of all the all the Asgaridans Clint had had the displeasure to meet, this Ryalt actually seemed like one of the good ones. And to make things even better, Loki had no discernable memory of him, so Clint’s opinion was all his own. It was such a relief to have something about this place not tainted by Loki’s thoughts, and to have it be someone who seemed to understand that this whole plan was shit, that Clint smiled at Ryalt for longer than he meant to.

 

Tasha stilled beside him. She was worried about his actions, but unwilling to interrupt in case this was something Clint might actually want to pursue. Sif, however, had no such compunction. The most terrifying of Thor’s friends stepped between Ryalt and the table, cutting off his view of Clint. “You know the rules that have been laid down, Earl Ryalt. If you wish to seek the attention of Valkyrie Clinton you must prove yourself worthy of facing his champions by defeating the Warriors Three.”

 

Ryalt skimmed his eyes off Sif and traced along the broad line of Clint’s shoulders. It wasn’t the lecherous gaze that most of the room sent his way when they thought Tasha wasn’t looking—and she was always looking—it was the assessing gaze of an asset, of an ally. The Asgardian flicked his eyes over Tasha and Coulson, pausing a bit longer on Phil before he met Clint’s eyes and murmured, “Yes Sif, I know. And I believe I would like to meet them all in the circle.”

 

Sif… stilled. Clint had kind of figured that Sif was just the kind of fighter who liked to lie silent in the grass before she sprang into an attack, but when Sif stilled, so did Thor. Their own thundering Asgardian wasn’t one for stillness. Even on movie nights when everyone else was motionless to take in the climax of a film, Thor chose that moment to reach for the popcorn. No, the only time Thor paused was before he and Mjolnir took off for the sky. That he was still now suggested that Sif was still for the same reason: Ryalt was a threat. Everyone else the Three had burned through today had been nothing but young warriors who’d been caught up in the romance of the moment. Ryalt though, he’d seen war and carnage on a scale that not even Thor’s band of Three had ever witnessed.

 

Sif gave him a nod of acceptance and ushered Ryalt on to the ring before her. Volstagg was still inside, playing with his prey before he put the boy out of his misery, and with a whole line of younglings still to come. But Clint had a suspicion that Ryalt would be bumped to the head of the list.

 

Thor watched them walk away with eyes torn between trouble at what would happen should Ryalt win, and excitement at watching the man fight. “So, uh,” Darcy interrupted. “Is it just me and not being around enough people who like to damage other people for a living, or was he totally badass?”

 

“I believe badass would be an accurate description.” Thor snorted. “Earl Ryalt rules over the northern lands of Asgard. He is one of the greatest tacticians ever to be born in the Nine Realms, and he was instrumental in our people’s defeat of the Jotuns.”

 

“So, he’s going to stomp the Warrior’s Three is what you’re saying.”

 

“He will defeat them thoroughly, but only enough that they will lose, but will allow them to retain their pride. His purpose in the fight is to impress Clinton, not to humiliate anyone in the process. Now that he’s spoken to Clinton, he would be a fool to think that such a tactic would be effective.”

 

Clint wanted to say that the guy had to be a fool for thinking that competing for Clint’s attention was going to turn out well for him in the first place, but he knew it was his own damn fault for looking back a little too long. “So, I didn’t actually expect anyone to beat the Warriors Three. What happens when they go down?”

 

“After the suitor has defeated your champions they are then allowed to court you, and you must allow them to attempt to woo you through whatever means you choose. Usually a Valkyrie will challenge the suitor to combat. Should the opponent win it is not a guarantee of anything, but Valkyries tend to value a warrior’s ability in combat over other traits.”

 

“And how many champions do I get?”

 

“Customarily there is only one, but you are allowed up to three.”

 

“Three it is then.” He quirked an eyebrow at Tasha and she rolled her eyes at him like he was an idiot for even asking. Like she’d stab anyone who tried to take her place. That was just as easy as he was expecting, so he turned to Coulson and froze.

 

Coulson had been his handler for longer than either man like to admit, and you didn’t spend that time together without knowing when your handler was telling you to stop. Everything about Coulson’s expression was placid, but he had that pinch at the corners of his eyes that usually only happened when he’d been shot.

 

So Coulson didn’t want to be one of his champions. That was fine. That didn’t hurt like getting fucking stabbed in the chest. He didn’t mind. ‘Cause Clint hadn’t secretly been thinking about watching Coulson and his tailored suit roam in to the ring with some Asgardian who thought that being human was going to be a disadvantage. He hadn’t wanted to watch Coulson kick someone’s ass without getting a single wrinkle in his tie.

 

It was fine.

 

Clint donned his most teasing smile, which they both knew was complete bullshit. “Don’t worry, Sir. I’d never ask you to risk your suit like that.” Clint twisted away to grin at Steve, but Coulson pressed his hand to the back of Clint’s neck.

 

It wasn’t a grab, because they both knew that if Coulson applied the right pressure he could force Clint to face him. No, it was a soft-handed suggestion that Clint not go running off to the worst possible conclusion. He flicked his eyes to Tasha in a silent request for help, but she just laughed at him without going to the trouble of moving her lips. Again, it was all the eyes.

 

Clint let himself be nudged back to Coulson, who was watching Clint with that soft smirk the normal people got at kittens. Clint was an assassin and superhero, so he didn’t know quite what to do with that expression. Coulson liked to bestow it on him when he’d done something Coulson found particularly stupid, but wasn’t actually Clint’s fault. (He and Tasha both got that look when they sometimes forgot how normal people thought about things.)

 

Coulson quirked his eyebrow and didn’t have to move his lips for Clint to know he was asking, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ And he did. Clint didn’t need to know why Coulson didn’t want to be one of his champions to know that he had a reason, to know that reason meant something more than Coulson writing him off. So Coulson quirked his eyebrow and Clint rolled his eyes, but when he turned away from Coulson it was with a smile.

 

“How about you, Cap?”

 

Steve looked a little surprised, but he really shouldn’t have been. Out of everybody he was probably the one best equipped to beat back an Asgardian. “I’d be honored, Hawkeye.”

 

Common sense said he should ask Thor next, have him be the last line of defense between Clint and one of his own people, but Clint had never been one for common sense, or one for making people comfortable. “How do you feel about helping out, Bruce?”

 

“I think the other guy would never forgive you if you didn’t let him. He is… almost unbelievably fond of you, Clint.”

 

“Yeah, I know he likes any fight he can get his hands on, but I was asking if _you’d_ be alright with it.”

 

Bruce gave him a shy grin. “Of course I would, Clint. Like Steve said, it would be an honor to watch your back the way you’ve watched ours.”

 

A hush at the center of the hall told them that the spectators had just realized Ryalt was hanging around the circle to do something more than watch. One of the young warriors had the stones to puff out his chest and object to Ryalt skipping ahead, but without looking, the older man kicked out his leg and brought the boy down hard. And well, there really wasn’t a whole hell of a lot any of the kids could say after that. (Clint tried not to think too hard about how the Asgardian had been busy watching _him_ instead of the oncoming threat. Nor did he want to know what it was Ryalt saw in his interactions with the other Avengers that had his expression settle into something so determined.)

 

Ryalt entered the ring, paying no attention to the bets Clint could see changing hands about whether the old warrior would be able to take down a man in his prime. Ryalt gave a slow tour of the circle, glancing over each of the runes with the tip of his massive axe while Volstagg settled himself into a fighting stance. Clint could see the logic in the Three’s arrangement. Despite having just finished a fight, Volstagg’s bulk and the force of his blows stood the best chance of tiring out Ryalt to give his other two companions something closer to a fighting chance.

 

Sif led them through the ceremonial words to seal the circle’s magic, and in an instant they were upon one another. Axe to axe they struck blows, Volstagg using all his strength to drive Ryalt back against the proverbial ropes that the circle used to keep the violence contained. Only, a breath before Volstagg got there, Ryalt shifted his weight and thrust with the blade. Clint flinched at the stupid move; only an amateur would try and use their axe like it was a sword. The blow caught Volstagg hard in his rather padded belly, and Clint could’ve sworn the Asgardian was about to laugh at someone actually trying to do him damage there. Volstagg pulled back to swing, expecting Ryalt to do what any self-respecting soldier would do, which was pull the axe back to block the blow.

 

Only, Ryalt seemed to be even more badass than Darcy had anticipated. He left himself open, exposed to the blow that might take him down, and twisted the axe up into a swing without winding up to put extra force behind it. A blow that short wouldn’t have pierced Volstagg’s armor, but that’s not what Ryalt was shooting for.

 

If they hadn’t been in the safety of the circle, Ryalt would’ve sliced Volstagg’s face open from chin to nose, and the magic knew it. For the first time in all the hours Clint had left him there to do his dirty work, the magic shifted Volstagg out of the circle in penance for his fatal blow.

 

Shocked silence permeated the room for a long moment, then people broke out into cheers. Well, Clint said people, but really it was the older guard, the warriors who had seen Ryalt fight before these long years of peace, and were proud to see one of their own in action again. The younger guns—the ones who’d been thoroughly put down by the Three over the course of the day—they looked furious. It was difficult to take them seriously though, when they puffed up like affronted children at the thought that someone might be better at their game than they were. Tony leaned across the table and murmured, “I think these kids are about three seconds away from throwing a temper tantrum.”

 

Clint snorted, and so missed the beginning of Ryalt’s fight with Fandral. Fandral was light on his feet, moving so fast between blows that Clint couldn’t come up with how anyone would actually be able to go on the offense against him. He struck out again and again with his twin swords, not wasting his time by teasing Ryalt and only using the one like he’d done with the others. Ryalt was no slouch, but it seemed like all he could do was twist his axe to fend off double blows with the head and handle.

 

Fandral drew first blood, and second, but still couldn’t seem to breech Ryalt’s defense and do enough damage to satisfy the circle. Fandral went for third blood when Ryalt didn’t get the butt of his axe up in time to catch the blow, and Tasha’s breath caught. She understood before Clint did what was about to happen.

 

Ryalt hadn’t missed the blow, he’d left himself open to get the shot he needed. Fandral lunged to take advantage of Ryalt’s open side, and Ryalt rolled along the outstretched arm like it was a path guiding him home. Fandral tried to recover with his other sword, but Ryalt brought up the axe to block him out, then threw his weight against Fandral’s chest. Light on his feet meant that Fandral sacrificed sturdy footing, and he went down like a sack of bricks.

 

By the time they hit the floor, Fandral was out from Ryalt’s axe slicing through his neck.

 

The Asgardians were stomping their feet and smashing their shields, overjoyed that they finally had a fight worth watching. Rather than charge in to battle like Fandral had done, Hogun offered Ryalt a drink and moment to rest before they went back to combat. Ryalt laughed at the notion he needed a break before the next fight, but Hogun was being polite, so he took it anyway.

 

Silently, Steve shifted himself down the table to get a clearer view, while Tasha perched on the table. Clint would leave them to watch and to decide for themselves which one of them should take Ryalt on first, and if the second would even be needed.

 

Soon enough Ryalt set aside his goblet and his fight with Hogun was over sooner than Clint thought possible. He didn’t dance around the ring to toy with him in the kind of fights you saw in the movies. Each warrior struck with the certain, lethal blows you used in actual battle. They were trying to take one another our like you would an enemy who wanted your head on a platter, but neither gained any real ground. Ryalt drew first blood, but Hogun and his mace came back hard and took second and third.

 

Clint thought that maybe Hogun might actually be able to take the other Asgardian down and all Clint’s preparations had been for naught, but with a hard push, things were over. Hogun dropped into a deep bow, and Clint could see Ryalt’s lips moving in some kind of congratulations for being so worthy a fight. Part of Clint’s brain recognized Frigga declaring that Ryalt had passed Clint’s first test, and then Thor stood up to announce Clint’s champions to the rest of the hall, and that they would negotiate between themselves about when the first conflict would take place.

 

But all of that, Clint took in in a haze. The talking went on around him, and the Avengers bundled him up and dragged him back to their room, out of sight of the Asgardians who were demanding that the next battle take place that very moment. But, Clint, Clint couldn’t pay any attention to that, because Ryalt had caught his eye across the room and smiled at him, and Clint had smiled back.

 

He hadn’t done it on purpose, it was just… Ryalt had been trying to breathe deep and pretend like the last fight hadn’t been a struggle, which Clint was getting old enough to understand. When Ryalt had realized that Clint was paying attention, he’d broken into a bright, boyish grin. And well, Clint couldn’t help it. He’d smiled back, a genuine smile like he shared with the Avengers at the end of a battle. However, a second after the expression crossed his lips, Clint realized what he’d done, and he had no idea why. Sure, Ryalt could hold his own in a fight, and he seemed to get that the Asgardians were being idiots about Clint, but none of that warranted smiling.

 

Clint smiled at his friends. He smiled at people that he knew, that he trusted. And Ryalt was neither of those things. But some part of Clint had decided that Ryalt was worth smiling at, and that scared the hell out of him.


	10. Chapter 10

Clint made it through the main room and halfway to his bedroom door before Tasha smashed into him from behind. Clint bucked back and got his feet under him to spring up, only Tasha kicked them out from underneath him. She slammed down on his back, one knee against the line of his spine. “What the hell was that?”

 

“I haven’t known what was going on since we got to this damn planet, what makes you think I’d know now?” He gave a little wriggle, testing her hold to see if he could throw her off without actually having to strain something. Usually she liked to give him those little outs to see if he could find them and make use of them, but not today.

 

“Do you want us to be stuck here for weeks while you flirt your way through every Asgardian that catches your eye?” 

 

Yup, straining things would totally be worth getting out of this conversation. He rammed his elbow back, but Tasha caught it and slammed it back down. “Don’t be an idiot. You’ll throw your shoulder out.”

 

“You don’t have to stick around and watch me do anything! No one asked you to stay.”

 

Tasha snorted and slouched off his back, lying down on the floor at his side. “Now you’ve lost your mind.”

 

All the fight dripped out of him. It was Tasha. “I might be, yeah.”

 

“Because you developed a crush on the hot Asgardian who seems to find your sass charming?” Tony asked, settling down a full goblet beside Clint’s head before flopping down himself. Clint did him the courtesy of flipping over and draining the liquor as best he could while horizontal. Tasha let him drink, then dropped her head to Clint’s chest.

 

“It’s not about appreciating his ability to beat the shit out of someone. It’s like when a friend comes back from a long assignment and you see them in the mess.”

 

Bruce sunk down to a lotus position at Clint’s side, clearly mulling on the implications of that. “Clint, are you having memories of a former life?”

 

“Alleged former life.” Tony corrected. He knew damn well what it was like to be a changed man and have people expect you to be exactly like the old one.

 

“It’s… I don’t really know. I know things I shouldn’t because for all he was great at invading other people’s minds, Loki was shit at protecting his own. So there are plenty of people and places around here that I recognize because Loki left behind that knowledge. But Loki didn’t really know Ryalt.”

 

“In one of life’s grand ironies, Loki always hated the cold, and Ryalt’s lands are in the north where it is never quite warm.” Thor explained, slouched like a sad puppy at Clint’s feet. “Ryalt does not often venture in to the capital, and when he did he did, he did not have much time for either Loki or I. My actions were too young to be worthy of his attention, and he was too straightforward to be worth Loki’s.”

 

“So you’ve got a preconceived opinion of Ryalt that’s like the stuff left behind from Loki, but not really? What does that mean?” Tony liked to reduce things to their quantifiable elements, and Loki’s mojo had never been one of those things.

 

“I know you are uncomfortable with this concept, Clinton. But I do believe it means that now that you are in Asgard, you are experiencing fragments of memory from your former life.”

 

“So you think Ryalt was Heidir’s grand, sneaky love affair?”

 

“No one knows the identity of her beloved, perhaps not even her actual beloved since I am told she preferred to admire from afar. All the events of Heidir’s life happened before I was born, so I cannot speak to what did or did not occur. I would ask my mother, but I believe that you would prefer none of us to display so obvious an interest in one of the candidates.”

 

“Yeah, you’re not wrong there.”

 

“That still doesn’t explain what you want to do about these non-Loki impulses you’re dealing with.” Clint had more relief than words could express that Bruce had made all of that Clint’s decision rather than something up for debate.

 

“Honestly, I don’t. The Loki shit running around my brain doesn’t bother me when we’re back home, so I think that whatever’s going on now will be just the same.”

 

“And if it’s not,” Coulson added, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. There’s no point in borrowing trouble.”

 

Clint had thought they’d reached a decision that meant they all got to get off the floor and leave him to stew. But they didn’t. They stayed there in their little Avenger pile, with Darcy and Bruce distracting Stark before he could say anything else, and Jane offering her silent comfort to Thor about the behavior of his people. Tasha ran soft fingers through the short scruff of Clint’s hair, but Coulson didn’t move. The Agent stood with crossed arms and a cocked eyebrow, silently waiting for Clint to explain how he’d gotten himself in this mess.

 

With all the rest of the Avengers in the room, and Tasha and Phil were still double-teaming him. Her with cuddles to lure him into comfort and Phil with stability that said he could fix this if Clint would just tell him what in the hell was going on.

 

Clint huffed a sigh. Usually he’d tap dance around the situation for as long as he could hid in the vents, but foreign territory wasn’t the time or place for that. No matter how much he’d prefer taking his time to get there. “Here’s the thing. I stuck with SHIELD because I had no other options.”

 

“I’m aware, Barton.” And yeah, of all people, Phil should be. He’d been the one to help sand out some of the rough edges that had come with Clint as a punk teenager who felt like he’d been abandoned by the only person in the world he dared to still trust.

 

“But here’s the thing: I ended up as a merc in the first place because that seemed like my only decent option. And I ran away from the circus because it was either that or get killed, and I left the foster home because I couldn’t stay, and I entered the damn system in the first place because it was all that a kid like me could do. I stayed with my asshole of a father because at that point I wasn’t the kind of kid who could run away.” Coulson had on that patient expression, the one where he didn’t want to express too much sympathy with Clint’s position because when he did Clint clammed up and broke something in retaliation. It was the look that meant Coulson wanted to give him a hug with one hand and shoot something with the other and he was forcibly stopping himself from doing both.

 

Clint shrugged off Natasha’s hand and skulked out of the Avengers pile. “The point is, that ever since I was a kid, I’ve been making the decisions that I have to. I’ve waited until I was boxed into a corner and then just did what I was told. I made every damn life-changing decision because I had no other option. Not because it was something I wanted, but because it was the only thing I could do that didn’t involve getting killed.”

 

“Not all of them,” Coulson interrupted. “You brought Natasha in, and that was the complete opposite of what you were told. It was so much the opposite that I nearly had to shoot you for it.”

 

Clint just stared at Coulson, almost wanting to yell at the man for interrupting the big emotional epiphany that he was trying to have here. But, as usual, Coulson was right. He’d refused the kill order on Natasha because it felt like the right thing to do, not because he’d screwed up his life enough that he was stuck with that as his only option.

 

Tasha was a choice, and that choice had turned out to be the best decision he’d made to date.

 

“That’s the point, Coulson. I _picked_ Tasha. I wasn’t stuck with Tasha as my only option because I’d been an idiot and trapped myself. I _picked_ her. Of my own free will and choice. And yeah, maybe I’ve made little calls like that over the years, but nothing big, nothing that actually meant anything for how I live my life. It’s just been Nat. Not that I’m complaining, ‘cause if I’m going to only have one good decision in my life, I’m willing to cash all my chips in on Tasha.

 

“But here’s the thing: it’s time I start making my own life decisions, not just because they’re the only option I’ve got in front of me at the moment.”

 

“And what decision are you making here, Legolas?” Tony asked. Darcy hissed at him to shut up and not interrupt the moment they probably weren’t supposed to be watching—but Clint had kind of forgotten that everyone was sitting there in between him and Coulson, so he couldn’t really blame them for their not actually eavesdropping.

 

“I’m deciding… to decide for my own damn self.”

 

After a long moment of silence, Darcy glanced around to everyone else to see if that made any more sense to rest of them. “No offense Clint, but I don’t know what that means.”

 

“Yeah, well. I don’t really know what I’m going to end up choosing, but whatever I do it’s not going to be because of a past life, or SHIELD. It’s going to be because I’m sick of having nothing in my life that wasn’t there because it’s what I ended up with.”

 

 

XXXXX

 

 

He should be sleeping.

 

Natasha was going to have to fight one of Asgard’s most talented warriors tomorrow, and Phil shouldn’t have left her on watch duty while he roamed off into the night. In the palace behind him he could hear the faint echoes of cheers as another warrior fell to Thor’s companions, and beyond that he could hear the steady throb that came with all cities. He’d left the Avengers sprawled over the couches in the main room shared between them, none of them willing to find their way to their beds and end up with someone else on top of Clint. It was his responsibility to get them all to bed anyway, but Phillip J. Coulson was having an off day.

 

From the morning stabbing to Clint’s fight with the Three, and Phil couldn’t decide if having to watch his agents swim around naked was worse than watching Clint stumble over himself and flirt.

 

He would’ve liked to be irritated with Clint for suddenly deciding that he welcomed Asgardian attention, but a significant portion of Phil’s own information gathering consisted of him seeming like a viable sexual alternative to Natasha. While the young and hormonal had been distracted by her beauty, Phil had settled himself down beside the Warriors Three and let people come to him. Natasha gathered all the gossip, while Phil milked Sif for every ounce of information he could get from her that didn’t damage her relationship with the Valkyries. (Information which Brunnhilde made sure to protect by dropping down on Phil’s other side and resuming their verbal sparring.)

 

Unlike Clint, Phil knew damn well when he was being flirted with. Both women respected him as a warrior—which was a phrase he never thought he’d utter. For Brunnhilde that respect manifested in the desire to slam him down to a mattress and ride him until she won, while Sif had spent enough time visiting the Avengers that she was more concerned about lessening the pain that came with being the one your beloved didn’t want. Worse than that, being the one they didn’t even see.

 

Phil was grateful for Sif’s worry, because it gave him the chance to share the load. The sure knowledge that someone out there knew what it was doing to him to be told that his archer had a long lost love who’d he’d been excited enough to see that he’d come back from the dead. Not that Phil was naïve enough to think that being told he was a reincarnated _anything_ would be enough to make Clint Barton do as he was told.

 

At least, he’d thought so until Clint made his little speech.

 

Natasha was probably beating Clint upside the head at this very moment, asking him what decision he thought she was going to let him make while he had Asgardians screwing with his head. If things went the way they always had Natasha would keep Clint from doing anything rash. (Just like she had when the Avengers thought Phil was dead, and back and the beginning when Clint had thought sparing her life would mean a bullet in his head.) But that was the trouble with Clint, you never quite knew when he was going to stay put and when he was going to jump. You could guess based on everything he’d done before, but you never knew for sure.

 

Despite all the knowledge Phil didn’t have, there was one thing he could figure out for himself.

 

So while his Avengers tried to help Clint sort through whatever this place was doing to his head, Agent Coulson went for a walk to visit the man who knew everything.

 

Coulson could feel Heimdall’s metaphorical eyes on him from the moment he stepped out of the Avenger’s suite. The Gatekeeper stood with his back to the Bifrost and his gaze on the city, unflinching as Phil strode down the Rainbow Bridge. Phil didn’t both blocking Heimdall’s view, instead standing shoulder to shoulder beside the man as he kept his eyes on the city.

 

Under normal circumstances Agent Coulson would be the one to sit in silence while he waited for the object of his attention to cave under the waiting silence, but he knew full well that the man who spent all day every day alone on the outskirts of society was not one he could outwait. “Are things usually this interesting?”

 

“This particular brand of interesting? No. I cannot recall a time when we have had a Midgardian arrive housing the soul of a fallen Valkyrie.”

 

Well that was curious. ‘Housing’ was a far different way to view Clint’s situation than ‘reincarnated’, or even ‘carrying’ another’s soul. ‘Housing’ made the whole affair sound temporary. “If the Valkyrie was anything like Clint, she would’ve had a penchant for causing as yet unheard of kinds of trouble.”

 

“Heidir was vivacious in much the same way, though she had not Clinton’s experiences with the pains of the world. Until her dying breath she knew only loyalty.”

 

“A loyalty that her fellow Valkyries seem to have carried into her death.”

 

“That is the way of her people.”

 

“Was it her way?”

 

Heimdall finally looked away from the city, turning his sharp golden eyes on Coulson. “She is loyal. Is Clinton?”

 

“To a fault. Right up until his loyalty leads to some irreparable harm to others.”

 

“Not to himself?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

Heimdall gave a low hmm, before he directed his gaze back to his duty. Coulson would never admit it, but he was grateful to get those all-seeing eyes off him. “It would be a great pity to push Clinton so far that he believes his loyalty will never be repaid.” Of course, it didn’t matter that Heimdall stopped looking at him if he found what he was looking for already. “Archers have the blessing of patience, but no matter how skilled the archer, eventually the muscles will give out. Someday the archer will have to take the shot. Whether it is the shot he originally wanted to take or not. He will take the shot he must before he cannot shoot anymore.”

 

Phil didn’t reply, but he didn’t leave either. He stayed beside Heimdall and watched the city with his own aging eyes and wondered just how long Heidr had waited before she just couldn’t wait anymore.

 

And if that was a trait that stayed with a soul.

 

 

XXXXX

 

 

Freya took a sharp bite from an enchanted apple and grinned at the women around her like she’d just conquered a dangerous foe. “I think apples may have become my new favorite food.”

 

Frigga refused to look up from her weaving and credit Freya’s triumph with any kind of attention. Gaea was busy dancing to some music that only played inside her head, so Freya was stuck with Idunn as her only source of comfort. However, the other woman was enough since she was pleased to hear that her spell was finally beginning to work. “It has taken effect then?”

 

“It is done perfectly. Clinton has accepted Ryalt’s suit and he’s well on his way to accepting the man himself. And with Ryalt comes Asgard.” Freya sunk down beside Idunn and handed her the rest of the apple, already pushing her to increase the spell’s pressure so that by this time tomorrow Clinton would be in Ryalt’s bed and halfway to never leaving again. It had been a feat of impressive magic to make the apples irresistible to Clinton in the first place, and now with every bite Idunn’s spell wound tighter and tighter around his soul. When Idunn caught Dr. Banner nibbling she added another layer to the spell, tugging away at the soul bindings that kept Clinton bound to the Avengers. Every time he tasted, he came closer to Asgard. And every time they tasted, the magic tugged them further away from him.

 

While the two women rejoiced, they both ignored how Gaea waltzed before the long windows that gazed down at Heimdall and the Rainbow Bridge. And somehow, neither of them noticed how Frigga wove in time to Gaea’s steps.


	11. Chapter 11

Coulson snuck back into the Avengers’ rooms an hour after he snuck out. Only, snuck wasn’t really the right word, because if that was the best sneaking he could do post-surgery, then Coulson was getting subjected to the Natasha Romanoff Spy Re-Education Program. Seriously, it was kind of like the man wasn’t even trying.

 

Both Clint and Tasha glared at him for being so obvious, and might’ve started his re-education right then and there, but a sharp knock at the door interrupted their moment. Before anyone could shout, “Go away,” one of Idunn’s servants swung open the door for the lady herself to stride in. Clint knew that Coulson, Cap, and Nat had divvied up a permanent watch schedule between the three of them, but that knowledge didn’t prep him for seeing Cap shrug on his shield and put himself between an All-Mother and his team.

 

Idunn quirked her lips like she found Steve charming. “Earl Ryalt has requested a chance to speak with Valkyrie Clinton.”

 

Clint didn’t bother lifting his head from the floor, though he could feel Tasha reaching for one of her knives. “I thought he was supposed to be discussing a time with my champions, and I didn’t have to talk to him until after.”

 

“He is well within his rights to request to know such things from you and you alone. And to ask for that information in person.” Clint glanced at Thor to check, and he shrugged in the way that said he wasn’t entirely sure, but it sounded plausible to him.

 

“Right, and it’s gotta be now?”

 

“He has the right to know at what time you will wish him to compete tomorrow, so that he may plan his day accordingly.”

 

“Of course he does.” Clint rolled to his feet. “Because we should be all about the rights of the guy hunting me and not give a shit about my right to tell him to go away.”

 

“Lady Idunn,” Thor interrupted. “I believe that now would not be the best time to lecture Hawkeye about his legitimate distaste for this process.”

 

“Lecture him I will not, but I must insist that Valkyrie Clinton respect the wishes of Earl Ryalt and go to this meeting without accompaniment.”

 

“What in the hell do you mean, ‘without accompaniment’? If he wants to know when he’s going to meet my champions, he actually has to talk to my champions!”

 

Idunn pinched her lips in the same way the nuns used to when Clint refused to get adopted without Barney. It was also the same look that Coulson had gotten in the early years when Clint had fired Nerf arrows at the Level Sevens. (Now Coulson found it funny, but the nuns never had.) That look meant Idunn thought Clint was a dumb kid who needed someone with more life experience to be making decisions for him. “He has requested the right to speak to you on his own, and you will grant him that right without complaint and without this venom in your tongue.”

 

Clint loomed so close to Idunn that her servants all twitched in unison. “Lady, I’m pretty sure that my _tongue_ is part of the reason he’s pursuing me.” Clint stormed past her and went into the hall, only to find Ryalt out there laughing. Clint was an assassin and an Avenger, and he absolutely refused to blush. Also, he refused to acknowledge that some part of him was actually tempted to blush. “Someday,” Ryalt laughed, “when it would not pose the threat of drawing more attention to you, I will tell everyone I know about your response, and it will become one of Asgard’s most beloved anecdotes.”

 

“Well that’s what I live for: getting gossiped about by people who have no idea who in the hell I am.” It was easy to fall into step beside Ryalt, letting the other man take the lead down the hall.

 

“They do not need to know you to appreciate someone sparking enough passion in Idunn to drive her into a fury. I however, would enjoy the story for the thoughts it gives me of you, full of fervor and fire.”

 

Clint slammed to a stop, still in hearing range of the door for whatever Avengers were hiding in wait. “Are you hitting on me? Because you might have forgotten this, but your son tried to sleep with me. And I don’t know how you Asgardians do things, but getting hit on by both a kid and his dad is a little kinky, even for me.”

 

“I am afraid I do not know what ‘kinky’ means. However, I do know that my son was not pursuing _you_ , he was pursuing the fame that would come from being the one to win you.” He waived Clint on, around a corner and into an alcove. It was farther than Clint would’ve liked to be from his team, but if the fondness he could feel for Ryalt was going to make him fumble this conversation, he didn’t want witnesses.

 

“Did you know Heidir?” The question was abrupt, but if this guy was only talking to Clint because of who they thought he’d been, then Clint was going to be far less merciful then he’d been to the guy’s son.

 

“No,” Ryalt affirmed, with just enough intensity that Clint though he understood why he was asking. “I knew of her, of course. It was impossible not to. I would have been able to recognize her across a room, but I do not believe we ever exchanged any words.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because I was whole-hearted in my pursuit of Aelle’s mother at the time. She would not have taken kindly to my striking up a friendship with a Valkyrie.”

 

“How did that work out for you?”

 

“Very well, actually. We had many hundreds of years together before we decided to move on to others.”

 

“Is a few hundred years a good run for you guys?”

 

“Do not the people of Midgard grow apart in their relationships? Do they not choose to part ways when the time has come for them to follow another path in their lives?”

 

“Of course. It’s human nature.”

 

“And it is Asgardian nature as well. If your people can change so much in the course of a decade, does it not make sense that my people should change as well?”

 

“Yeah it does, I just. I expected all you guys to be like Frigga and Odin.”

 

“Or perhaps, all us to be like this mythic lover of Heidir’s? Supposedly someone worth leaving the peace of Folkvangr?” And that was hitting the nail right on the head. These people were so determined that Clint belonged here because of who they thought he’d been, not thinking that even if maybe Clint had been Heidir in some previous life, he wasn’t her now.  

 

“So you weren’t in love with Heidir, and you don’t seem like the kind of guy who’d want glory from who he was sleeping with, and according to Thor you can’t really get much more popular than you are right now, so what in the hell is going on? Why are you doing this?” 

 

Ryalt slouched back against the bench, and some part of Clint felt bad for breaking the moment they’d been having. But never let it be said that Clint Barton wasn’t one for doing the painful. “I engaged in this process because I thought that perhaps I might be able to win your affections. You are… fascinating in way I have not seen in many long years. I have seen that haunted look in eyes before, and I want to free you from it.”

 

“I’m not haunted.” Clint spat.

 

“You are. Whether by Loki or by the deeds you’ve done in life, you are. Either way, I would like to know what troubles you.”

 

“People telling me that I’m a reincarnated woman! That’s what troubles me.”

 

Clint would’ve stabbed the man with the blade he had hidden is his belt if Ryalt didn’t look so damn empathetic. Sympathy was unforgivable, but that was the look of a man who’d pieced himself back together after the world had gone sideways, it was the same look that every field agent and soldier got at some point in their lives.

 

“There is peace in my halls, Clinton. At this time of year we wake every morning to frost glistening the ground and fog wrapping the windows like a blanket at night. It is as thought the world outside does not exist and will never come to call. It would take more than the Bifrost for anyone to find you there, and the skill of my sorcerers is so great that not even that mark on your skin would lead them to you.”

 

Clint didn’t want to admit it, but that quiet sounded nice. Even worse, over the last 48 hours he’d almost forgotten about the tattoo he had hidden underneath the gauntlet he had on his arm. The Asgardian clothing bore the same mark, but as long as he couldn’t see his own skin he could pretend like it wasn’t here, like it could be peeled away as easily as the leather wrapped around it. Like he could hide the tattoo just like he could hide from his life.

 

But he’d spent too much time letting himself be led.

 

An hour ago he’d decided to stop getting dragged into shit, and letting himself get dragged into hiding was almost worse than getting dragged into a fight.

 

“I would like to take you the warmth of my halls, Clinton. But if you wish to force yourself to carry on as you have been, I would willing join you on Midgard.”

 

That was strange enough that it startled a, “Why?” out of Clint.

 

“Why do I want to come, or why do I want to keep you safe?”

 

“Both. Either.”

 

“I want to come to Midgard because it has been a thousand years since I’ve seen your world, and I would like to know how it has changed. And because I look forward to any chance I might have to watch you draw your bow. As for why I want to keep you safe, I felt you deserve some peace and I want to be the one who gives it to you. You are far too precious to continue on as you have been.”

 

“Hey, I’m good at my job.”

 

“I do not speak of your profession, Clinton.” Ryalt almost looked disappointed in Clint for thinking that’s what he meant. “No man can continue on forever with love in his heart that is not returned. You live with too much fire, and if you go on this way it will burn you dry.”

 

Clint choked on his drink, sputtering it down the wrong tube when he tried to demand to know what in the hell Ryalt was talking about. Ryalt smacked him hard on the back, laughing more than anybody should when they’d clearly lost their mind. “What?” Clint wheezed out. “I mean, I love Tash, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not that kind of love.”

 

“I do not speak of your red-haired Fury. You are bound, body and soul, of that I have no doubt, but she is not the one you would have win your heart through these contests.”

 

“Who in the hell are you talking about?” Clint spat. Some part of him recognized that he was snapping when the situation didn’t call for it, but he couldn’t stop his words.

 

“Clinton.” Ryalt pressed his palm to Clint’s cheek and gave him a soft smile. “You are in love with the Son of Coul.”

 

“What?” Clint croaked.

 

“Were you any other being, I would tell you that you follow him with your eyes, always wanting to know he safe, and he is with you. But you are Hawk Eyes, so you watch everything. Instead, you do not watch the Son of Coul. You trust him in your blind spot, to be in your rearguard without confirmation that he has stepped into that space.”

 

“I trust all my team that way.”

 

“No, you do not. You trust that they can fulfill the role, but not that they will know it is where they should be. I believe you will trust them that way soon, but you are not there yet.”

 

“I trust Tasha.”

 

“As I said, she is a part of you. You want her for a twin, not a lover.”

 

“I do not want to have sex with Coulson,” Clint declared, shoving away Ryalt’s hand.

 

“Is that how one defines lover among your people?”

 

“Usually!” Ryalt reached for him and Clint stormed across the balcony, unwilling to be touched.

 

“It is not about intercourse, Clinton. It is about choosing to make your life with someone. To invite them in so they might have a place in your soul. To share a piece of yourself that you would otherwise choose to keep to yourself.”

 

“That’s great and all, but he’s my handler. And I like to have sex with the people I’m doing my soul sharing with.”

 

“If I am understanding my overheard conversation correctly, the Son of Coul is your _former_ handler. And do you honestly mean to tell me that never once after a battle did you share a bed?”

 

“That, that’s none of your business.” Clint sputtered. Post-mission adrenaline didn’t count for anything. It was burning off steam before you went out and did something stupid from your high. And for such a buttoned-up guy Coulson was awesome at winding Clint down from whatever edge he’d worked himself towards because of a fight.

 

“No it is not my business, but you wanted to know how I know you are in love with him. And I told you that you trusted him with a piece of your soul.”

 

“I do not!” Clint snapped.

 

Ryalt gave him a soft smile, the same one that crossed Tasha’s face when she thought he was being an idiot. “Did you know that when he put his hand on the back of your neck when you were choosing champions that you leaned in to the touch?”

 

“Wh-what?”

 

“You settled under his hand, letting him hold you close in your most exposed spot. He ran his thumb along that vulnerable tendon in your neck and up into the nape of your hair, and you gentled at it rather than tensed like any warrior’s instinct might have insisted.” Clint opened his mouth to snap back, but Ryalt rolled right over the top of him. “And do not tell me that you are not a warrior. There are no words you could speak and nothing you could do to make either you or me believe in such a falsehood. To your soul his touch meant safety, not restraint. That is how I know that you love him.”

 

It made a messed up, but perfect sort of sense. It was the stupid kind of backwards response that sounded just like Clint. He wanted to snap back that he didn’t give a shit about restraint, he wasn’t an animal that needed to be gentled in to affection. But the moment the words left Ryalt’s lips Clint knew he was right. He could scream and shout and drag Ryalt off to a spare room and have sex with the other man, but he’d still be in love with Coulson. Clint needed distance to see things, and there was nothing like the distance of an otherworldly non-Avenger to actually give him some perspective. Clint sunk back down to his bench and murmured, “Holy shit, I’m in love with Coulson. How in the hell did that happen?”

 

Ryalt slung his arm around Clint and pulled him close. “That, my dear Clinton, I do not know. But I _do_ know that you deserve to be loved in return.”

 

 

XXXXX

 

 

Clint stumbled back into his room looking like he’d been beaten upside the head with Hogun’s mace. He didn’t need to explain to Tasha, because she already knew. He didn’t know if she’d managed to sneak out of the room and eavesdrop, or if she’d stolen Stark’s phone to boost the sound, or if she’d shoved Thor next to the door and made him do the listening for her. But no matter what it was, the Avengers were waiting for him in the main room, piled together on a mountain of mattresses like they were there for a sleepover.

 

Tasha gathered him close and without a word nudged him into a chair so she could strip off his armor and the tunic underneath before moving on to his boots. He couldn’t imagine what she’d threatened the others with—though really, he probably just looked that bad—but the conversation trickled out and no one tried to ask him what happened. Stripped down to his trousers Tasha took him by the hand and led him to the middle of the Avenger-pile currently taking up their common room. Tasha had carved out a space for the two of them, in between the Jane sandwich made by Thor and Darcy, and Tony prodding Bruce into being his snuggle-buddy. Cap looked torn between doing the demure thing and carving out his own little corner, or pressing up against Tony’s back.

 

Clint hit his knees and wavered forward, about to just drop down and let it come. He knew what was supposed to happen now. He was supposed to curl up with Tasha, just like he had before he was summoned out into the hall and his world was rearranged. (And Steve would lie down with plenty of personal space beside Bruce, only to wake up with Stark as the little spoon.)

 

But tonight, tonight Clint was so damn tired. He didn’t want to fuss, or to fight, he wanted to sleep without worrying about all the shit that would come from tomorrow. Instead of hitting the mattress and taking his place at Tasha’s side, he looked up and stretched out his hand to Coulson. Coulson, who looked as barely unbuttoned as he always did when it was his night to keep watch. Only, this time Clint noticed the dip of Coulson’s collarbone under the single button he’d undone on his jacket. And the ruffle at the nape of his neck that he hadn’t quite known needed to be smoothed out after he ran his fingers through his hair. And the way his eyes smiled when he took in his team all wrapped up together in one place.

 

Clint was supposed to give him a polite nod before turning in, but tonight, tonight he felt like he’d sloughed off a second skin that had been keeping him penned. And tonight he held out his hand to pull Coulson in beside him.

 

Coulson was surprised, and Clint didn’t need to be a spy to see it. Before Clint had a chance to rethink his call, Coulson toed off his shoes and asked, “Captain, do you mind handling the watch tonight?”

 

Steve said yes, of course he did, but Clint was a little busy watching Coulson peel away his layers. First went the socks, then the plain white shirt that cost more than Coulson would ever admit to, then the belt. He paused for a moment, mulling, then stripped off his trousers and added them to the neatly folded pile. There was nothing sexual about it. The sight of so much of Coulson’s bare skin should’ve sent him off in a wave of lust, but it didn’t. He was too tired to get aroused, and it was more than that.

 

It was Coulson in his undershirt and boxers laying down at Clint’s free side, leaving it up to Clint how he wanted them positioned. The three of them hadn’t shared a bed often enough to have designated a sleeping pattern, so both Tasha and Coulson stayed on their sides, waiting for Clint to make the call. Any other night he would stay on his back and pull Tasha up to his side, letting Coulson get as close or as distant as he was comfortable with. But although that’s what he should do, tonight it wasn’t what Clint wanted.

 

He lurched over and nudged at Coulson’s shoulder until the older man rolled on to his back. Clint shimmied up against his side, burrowing his face in the crook of Coulson’s neck. Coulson had the decency to wrap one arm around Clint’s shoulders and put his free hand on the hand Clint had over the scar Loki had left in Coulson’s chest. Clint felt Tasha curl up behind him, guarding his back while he was giving Coulson his throat. With Tasha’s touch and the warm-coffee-paper scent of Coulson in his nose, Clint slept like he hadn’t in years.


	12. Chapter 12

Clint wanted to spend his whole day in bed, with Phil before him, Tash behind him, and the Avengers around him in their little nest. Really, all they needed were some snacks and Clint could’ve stayed like that for days. Tucked together with all the people in the world that he trusted, and the ones he was learning to trust.

 

Of course, the peace lasted for about thirty seconds after Clint woke before Idunn swept into the room with her followers trailing along in her wake. Clint was prepared not to be too irritated with her because the presence of outsiders meant they didn’t have enough privacy for him to have to explain what had possessed him to drag Coulson to bed in the first place. And, Clint could smell the breakfast that they’d brought along with them. Stupidly, Clint thought that maybe it could be a nice, peaceful day where he got all the perks of comfort without actually having to explain himself. Which was the exact moment that one of Idunn’s little helpers reached into the pile of sleepy Avengers to pull Clint free and got Coulson’s gun to his nose.

 

And well, things just went downhill from there.

 

And by downhill, Clint meant that decorum insisted that he spend a little time watching the fights before Ryalt stepped into the ring opposite Cap. Like Clint’s presence was supposed to be fanning the flames of this stupidity and make more idiots want to challenge for his hand. (Cap had offered to go first so Natasha could have the chance to watch Ryalt in a bit of a longer fight before she might have to go second, while they both hoped that they would be enough to keep Bruce out of the ring.)

 

Which, yeah, watching Ryalt warm up was almost as good as watching Steve and Nat strip down for sparring practice. Mostly because the man had a shoulder-to-waist ratio even better than Thor’s, but also that he had enough respect for Clint to go through the motions of warming up when yesterday he’d burned through the Three without a second thought. (And Clint was man enough to admit that watching Ryalt and Steve warm up was a decent distraction from the bomb Ryalt had dropped on his head last night. And distract him from the reality that apparently Ryalt had decided that Clint’s unacknowledged love for Coulson was going to remain unrequited, which mean Ryalt had taken as permission to keep pursuing Clint.)

 

All of that Clint could’ve managed if Idunn hadn’t walked him arm in arm straight up to the high table. Thor shuffled along behind them, his big eyes pleading that Clint not snap Idunn’s arm in two for touching him. Clint refrained, and he really wished he wouldn’t have because he ended up stuck between Freya and Idunn—with Thor stuck between Gaea and his mom where he could do Clint absolutely no good—and Sif and Brunnhilde keeping the Avengers company. Specifically, Sif was with the Avengers while Brunnhilde seemed to have taken on Coulson duty. And it seemed that Coulson duty involved kicking her leg over his and pulling him into the V of her thighs.

 

Which Coulson didn’t seem to mind, and well… that wasn’t helping things.

 

“He is a beautiful man, is he not?”

 

“Always has been.” Clint murmured. It took him a moment to realize that Freya wasn’t talking about the way Coulson’s ears lit up like C4 when Brunnhilde pulled him around. And yeah, Ryalt’s triceps hefting that massive axe were something only a genetically-unenhanced archer could appreciate, but they still weren’t better than Coulson’s ears. Clint flinched his gaze away from the Avenger’s table. Thankfully Freya seemed to take the motion as Clint being awkward about getting caught gawking at his Asgaridan suitor. He snapped up an apple from the bowl before him and took a too big bite so he couldn’t be expected to comment.

 

Freya smirked at him like he was being obvious—which he was, just not about what she thought. “You needn’t hide your affection from me. I am pleased with your choice.” And if everything about that sentence didn’t freak him the hell out, Clint didn’t know what would. Loki didn’t like Freya, but he respected her. She was talented enough at subterfuge that a decent chunk of the time she could see through Loki’s tricks. Being told that she approved of Ryalt was nearly enough to make Clint want to reject the man then and there, no matter how nice and quiet his snowy halls sounded.

 

“That he is a talented warrior goes without saying, but he is also a good leader of men. I have seen how he leads them with a soft word and a kind hand that makes them eminently loyal to him. I know how you prefer your lovers gentle.”

 

Clint nearly choked on his bite of apple. “What in the hell makes you think that’s what I like?”

 

Freya gave him that soft, exasperated look that he could hear in JARVIS’ voice when Tony forgot to sleep for a few days. “It’s what you always liked in your partners.”

 

What Clint wanted to say was: “You do realize that I’m a man, right? And we like different things out of sex than you do.” But it was difficult to tell Freya she was full of shit when Clint got slammed upside the head with the impression of big hands trailing lightly over his much smaller than usual rib cage.

 

At some point or another in his time with SHIELD, Clint had been called a tactical genius. He’d laughed when Tasha showed him that particular mission report—not written by Coulson strangely enough. (When asked, Coulson had said obvious things didn’t need to take up space in the already lengthy paperwork. He might not have believed Coulson when he said it, but Tasha had rolled her eyes like it was obvious to her too.) Clint still liked to think he just saw things better from a distance, and today it seemed like the required amount of distance for understanding was feeling like somebody else was taking up space in his own head.

 

He could feel it tugging at the back of his mind, whispered words in the early morning light, stolen touches while no one was looking, and frantic kisses in the quiet night where no one could hear. It was seductive and so simple to see Ryalt in the place where the Valkyrie’s forgotten lover might have been. To feel her skin shifting to his, Ryalt’s steady hands trailing along Clint’s battle-scarred ribs.

 

Somewhere at the edge of the memory Clint could hear shouting, which didn’t mesh with the sensations his mind was spinning, so the presence flitting around his subconscious shoved them neatly into the box where he’d spent his time when Loki had wrapped his fingers around his brain. Clint could feel the quiet descending on him, the peaceful silence of a safe place to spend his days and a love at night who’d just let him be. No questions, no demands, no push to be anything other than what he was. Clint could see a sleep-mussed Ryalt hovering above him on some snow-covered morning, but then, he wasn’t.

 

Kind of.

 

Lurking behind Ryalt’s skin Clint could see Tasha. Could see the way he red hair still fell in unruly curls around her face when she came to pull him out of bed before he was ready to wake. Could see eyes that should be laughing at Clint’s subconscious being foolish enough to sleep through the arrival of the world’s deadliest assassin.

 

But they weren’t laughing.

 

Like a shadow moving through his dream Clint could see Tasha’s nose wrinkle at the force of her lips parting in a shout. He tried to push her face into the box at the back of his mind, but he got distracted by the feel of a sting on his scalp. Clint had half a second for his imagination to remember where that pain came from and try to interpose Ryalt’s hand in his hair, but already he felt his skull being smashed against the ground.

 

The peaceful dream world around him shattered upon impact. Clint came to with Tasha crouched over him and the definitive sounds of pissed off Avengers echoing through the hall. “What the hell?” Clint croaked.

 

“Cognitive recalibration.” Was all the explanation Clint got before Tasha grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet.

 

When he got there, Clint kind of wished that he’d stayed down.

 

The Avengers plus Sif and the Warriors Three had formed a defensive circle around him, their weapons in hand as they faced down the hall full of Asgardians in between them and the exit. Which, on its own probably wouldn’t have been that bad if Bruce hadn’t been facing down Freya. A Freya who was smirking at him like he was a small child throwing a tantrum.

 

“I don’t care what you have to say about it. All I know is that Clint was fine, then you sat down next to him and he started to seize!”

 

“Dr. Banner—” Ryalt tried to interrupt, stupidly putting himself between Bruce and Freya like he might be able to stop them.

 

“Get in the ring, Freya.” Bruce spat.

 

“Dr. Banner,” Freya smirked, and Clint could see the green rippling under Bruce’s skin. Clint took half a step forward to jump over the high table and put an actual stop to the fight, but Tasha squeezed the grip she’d never let go on his arm.

 

“Don’t patronize me. I don’t care about the Valkyries’ relationship with Asgard, and I don’t care about your position. The only thing I care about is the damage you’ve done to my friend because of your interference. Now get in the ring.”

 

There was a long second there where Clint expected her to stab Bruce before either of them got anywhere near their runic confinement, and that probably would’ve ended with the building getting pulled down around their ears. “He is a Valkyrie, Dr. Banner. I do not mistreat my Valkyries.” Freya spat, like he’d insulted her an ten generations by the insinuation.

 

“He’s an _Avenger_ , and we’ve established that your people will do whatever they want when it comes to Midgardians. Now get your ass in the ring. Unless, of course, you don’t think you can handle me?”

 

Clint knew damn well that the Asgardians had been whispering about his choice of Bruce as one of his Champions. Not a single one of them could understand why he’d put aside Thor to show such favor to the mousey doctor who looked like he couldn’t so much as heft a sword, let alone win a fight. (They didn’t seem to realize that Clint wanted to protect Thor’s political capital from this drama as much as possible, or that Bruce’s eyes had changed from brown to an eerie green the morning Clint found an interloper in his bed, and they hadn’t turned back.)

 

The whispers only got worse when Bruce politely waited for Freya to step in the circle then followed after her like a schoolboy. They tried to be a bit more subtle about the whispering when Gaea stepped up to the edge and sealed the circle behind them. Then, the whispering didn’t matter so much because the Hulk had come out to play.

 

And if Clint had thought it was a bad day before… at this point he was just grateful that no one had gotten shot.

 

Before the dust settled on the now shattered ring of runes, the Avengers were bustled out of the hall and back to their quarters. Gaea did the bustling, so no one had the gall to get in their way. (Though, that might have been the Hulk refusing to switch back when there were so many threats around.) Clint went through the whole thing in a fog, trying to understand where his head had been and how in the hell his imagination had gotten them to an interplanetary incident.

 

(His attempt to puzzle himself out wasn’t much helped by Gaea dropping a kiss to his forehead on her way back out the door to help with damage control and the pissed off Valkyries. With Gaea’s lips pressed to his skin she murmured that the choice must come down to who he was, not who they wanted him to be. And Clint wasn’t really in the mood for riddles about which “they” she was talking about.)

 

Although, things might have gone a bit better if Ryalt hadn’t invited himself along to the Avengers after party. “What were you thinking? Your impetuous behavior could mean war between Asgard and Vanaheim!”

 

Coulson dropped a soft hand on the Hulk’s arm and held him back from doing damage to an Asgardian where the place wasn’t spelled to fix it. (Though, judging by the hefty bruises Freya had been sporting by the time he was done, Clint didn’t know if the magic circle had actually done anything.) Tony gave the Hulk a quick pat and stormed forward. “He was thinking that he’s a doctor and he could see our friend having a medical episode that Freya tried to keep him from stopping.”

 

See, here was the thing: Bruce didn’t really trust a lot of people, but the people Bruce trusted immediately became people Tony looked out for. And both of those men knew exactly what it was like to have people not see you for who you really were. Clint turned his back on the drama behind him while he tried to piece together what in the hell was going on.

 

“I agree with you that Freya’s prevention was foolhardy, but Clinton is her friend, as we all are, and she only sought to protect him.”

 

And that wasn’t quite right. Because Freya didn’t give a shit about Clint. She cared about the woman she thought Clint had once been. She wanted her friend back, which yeah, Clint could understand, but Freya’s friend was dead and Clint was kind of the one using his body right now.

 

“Protect him from the friends that he’s actually seen this lifetime?”

 

“Stop it.” Cap interrupted. “Clint was wounded, we helped him. That’s all that matters.”

 

“Not to Vanaheim it isn’t! You sent a beserker against the head of the Valkyrie and one of Vanaheim’s most beloved children. The only thing worse would have been to attack Frigga!” Ryalt tossed a haphazard hand at Thor, who just crossed his arms and refused to let himself be baited. He was careful to keep himself between Ryalt and the two non-superhero members of their company and he wasn’t sacrificing that position to get in a shouting match.

 

“Your companion lost his temper and has perhaps endangered one of the oldest and best alliances that our people have ever known. Dr. Banner will take back his human form and apologize to Freya for his actions.”

 

And that, that was just bullshit. Bruce was trying to save him, and Tony was trying to save Bruce, and Thor was trying to protect Jane and Darcy, and Cap was trying to protect them all, and Tasha and Coulson were standing side by side with the Hulk while Clint stared out a window and screwed his head back on straight.

 

Ryalt stepped towards the Hulk, stepped towards Tasha and Coulson, and Clint wasn’t sure how it happened. He didn’t quite remember when it was he’d tucked a knife into the belt of his pants, but it was in his hand, and then it wasn’t. It was imbedded in the soft padding at the joint between Ryalt’s breastplate and the armor at his shoulder. It had probably gone through and nicked the muscle underneath, but Clint didn’t much care at this moment.

 

“She wasn’t trying to protect me, she was trying to bring out Heidir.”

 

Ryalt pulled out the knife and let it clatter to the floor, like getting stabbed by potential lovers was the kind of thing that happened all the time. “Why would she do that?” Ryalt asked, like he could lead Clint back to the land of logic.

 

“Because this whole shit-fest has been about Freya getting her friend back. In her eyes Clint Barton is just the host, just the guy she’s got to get through to get access to her friend.”

 

“Clint, such an offense would be nigh unpardonable to our people. I do not think she would be so rash just to speak to one who made her own choice to be reincarnated.”

 

“I don’t care what you think about it. I know what I know.”

 

“Clint,” Ryalt took half a step forward, ready to scoop Clint into his arms and cuddle him away from the Avengers. Clint didn’t need Tasha’s flinch to know that Ryalt thought Clint was being led astray by these hooligan Midgardians and their penchant for violence. But that shit didn’t matter since his Midgardians were the ones who’d fight and die for him.

 

“Get out.” Clint said, turning his back on Ryalt to check up on the Hulk.

 

He didn’t have to turn around to know that Ryalt stepped forward, not going to take no for an answer from a man he considered compromised. Clint didn’t have to look to know that Tasha twisted around to take her place by him while she let Phil handle Ryalt. Judging by the sound, had stepped forward to offer a mild threat that made anyone with sense’s blood run cold.

 

He expected Ryalt to take the hint and leave Clint alone with his team. But it seemed Ryalt wasn’t giving Clint up without a fight. Ryalt grabbed Coulson by the still-pressed lapels of his jacket, and got a bullet graze to the thigh for his trouble. (Clint didn’t know if he was proud of Coulson for not taking the kill shot, or irritated that Coulson could still restrain himself.) Ryalt flinched back at the burning slice of a bullet through his flesh, and went to backhand Coulson for the blow.

 

As one the Avengers lurched forward, but Cap was quicker on the uptake than all of them. Coulson ducked the blow as Cap tossed his shield. But, the shield didn’t land.

 

At least, it didn’t land in Ryalt’s flesh like Clint was expecting. Phil snatched the shield from the air and brought it up to catch the fist Ryalt was aiming for the scarred flesh of his ribs. Some part of Clint could imagine Coulson shoving Ryalt back with the broadside of the shield and whipping it around to smash him across the head like that might make his common sense turn on.

 

But it turned out the Hulk was done with this shit.

 

He stretched one big, green hand around Coulson and snatched up Ryalt to toss him out the closed door. Being an Asgardian, Ryalt forced himself back to his feet and tried to make his way back in. Instead, Darcy and Tony, with twin smiles of, “Just try it, we dare you,” the two slammed the door in his face. (There was a moment there where Clint was the only one Ryalt could see. A moment where Clint could feel the same voice from before slither towards the forefront of his mind. But that voice didn’t mean a damn thing when Clint wound his fingers through Phil’s and mouthed at Ryalt, “And stay out.”)

 

The Avengers were quiet for once. No back slapping or ‘I told you so’s going around. He figured that the team was trying to give him space so he could freak out in peace about what had just happened to him, but now that the whole mess was done, Clint wasn’t sure that he cared. In truth, he was freaking out a little bit that the team had ever thought he’d cared in the first place. He was freaking out that he’d ever actually cared about Ryalt in the first place. Yeah, the guy was hot, but Clint didn’t know a damn thing about him. And he wanted to take Clint away from Tasha and Coulson. And he thought that Clint deserved to be with someone better than Coulson. And repeating those words to himself in the light of day made Clint realize how ridiculous that sounded. There was no one better than Coulson. And if Clint was going to be hopelessly in love with someone, there was no one better to do it with.

 

So as nice as it was that the team was trying to let Clint sort himself out, he just ended up getting himself pissed. By the time Frigga walked in with Brunnhilde in tow, Clint had found his way back to the rage that had carried him through the Bifrost. Before the Queen of Asgard had the chance to speak Clint spat, “I’m done with this shit. No more fights, no more suitors. I want to get the hell out of this place.”

 

“Well that’s good because no one will have you.” Brunnhilde snarked.

 

“What?”

 

“It seems,” Frigga interrupted. “That Clinton’s appeal dropped dramatically once the challengers understood that they would have to get through Dr. Banner in his alternate form.”

 

Translated to normal people speak, that meant the Asgardians were done with him. He was free off all this past life bullshit. “What happens now?” He demanded, hoping they could go straight to the Bifrost before they ended up in another fight.

 

“Now? Now we shall sit together on this night, and you shall partake of all the hospitality that Asgard should have shown you from the beginning. We shall feast, and you shall tell me of your exploits while I regale you of Thor’s youthful misadventures. And then, in the morning, after I have made all the restitution I am able, you shall return home with some good memory of Asgard.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that writing during a rain storm is excellent inspiration when you're trying to write something magical? Did you also know that when the power cuts out in the middle of that rainstorm you're going to lose the last twenty pages that you just re-wrote of the story because you were so caught up in the inspiration that you forgot to click save? 
> 
> No? You didn't know that? Well now you do, and now you know why this update took so long. Sorry about that. The next chapter will be up tomorrow though.

Clint—for all decades of experience told him it was a stupid idea to trust the leader of a bunch of people who’d kidnapped him—trusted Frigga.

 

Even without Loki’s unbridled love running around the back of his head, Clint’s months with Thor would’ve told him everything he needed to know about the High Queen of Asgard. It was kind of hard to distrust a woman who’d raised the loyal puppy that was Thor, and even harder when he could remember all the good, non-manipulative things that made Loki love her. He knew she wasn’t perfect since she’d stayed married to Odin all these centuries, but she was still good people.

 

Trusting Frigga to handle things meant that Clint sat there and listened to her tell stories about teenage Thor until the wee hours of the morning. The Warriors Three piled on every embarrassing story they’d ever thought they were sneaky enough to keep from Frigga, while she and Clint shared secret smile a that the lot of them still hadn’t figured out that Loki had told Frigga everything the moment he got home. Sif came in to take a long look at how Coulson had his arm wrapped around Clint’s shoulders. Clint tensed when she approached, but she dropped a kiss to Phil’s bald spot and gave Clint a dirty wink. (Brunnhilde just dragged her eyes over Clint with a snort, and murmured something in Coulson’s ear that made him blush like he was on fire.)

 

At some point the Avengers all stumbled to bed with Thor’s companions, everyone taking up their newfound places in the pile of mattresses on the floor. From the moment Clint banned Ryalt from the room, Coulson had been by his side, and he stayed there even in sleep. Clint tried not to read too much into it since he and Coulson hadn’t actually had ten seconds to themselves to, uh, _chat_ about Clint’s revelation.

 

Though, he was beginning to suspect that Coulson might have already figured out that Clint was strung out on him. And had been strung out on him for a while. Because never once that night had Coulson tried to push Clint off when he kept violating the man’s personal space. In fact, he let Clint come and go and he pleased, letting Clint slip under his arm and press up against his side, and letting Clint scamper off to Tasha after he realized that he’d sunk into Coulson’s warmth. It would’ve been less odd if Coulson had been wearing his Agent of SHIELD face, the one that meant he was treating it like any one of a hundred ops where he’d done whatever he had to do to keep his agents in one piece.

 

No, it was his Phil face.  

 

The one he had when the security cameras were off and the lines at the corners of his eyes were from laughter rather than stress. (Both were still caused by Clint.) There was not one ounce of pressure, but neither was there anything different. Like maybe this is what had been going on all along and Clint had just never noticed that he invaded Coulson’s space like the man’s heat was the only thing keeping him sane.

 

Of course, there would be moments when Coulson’s fingers would run up the back of Clint’s neck and slip through his hair. And other times the man would skim his touch under the hem of Clint’s shirt to trace the warm skin at the top of his pajamas. Clint was positive that if _that_ had ever happened before, he would’ve noticed it.

 

Almost positive.

 

Pretty positive.

 

Mostly… positive.

 

Positive or not, Clint was ready to blame any lack of awareness about Coulson’s prior touching habits on Asgard’s influence rather than on his own stupidity. Though, as every second passed it was getting harder and harder to view any of this shit as something that wasn’t actually Clint being an idiot. Because, you see, Clint had fallen asleep with his face pressed to the hollow Phil’s throat and Tasha as the big spoon behind him. He’d figured that surrounded by Avengers and Warriors, and with Frigga’s word that things were going to be fine and they’d actually be able to sleep.

 

Apparently, that was stupid of him.  

 

‘Cause, you see, Clint fell asleep surrounded by his people, and woke up in the center of the great hall’s runic circle.

 

Clint had half a beat to think, “Well, this is gonna go poorly,” before the fragments of shattered runes surrounding him sparked like an empty lighter. They snapped again, this time their light turned in to a steady glow, spreading out to form circle around Clint. A circle that happened to pass over half a dozen new runes painted in to the empty spaces where the Hulk had used Freya’s body to smash things apart. With a sizzle the new runes connected with the old ones, and their circle of light shot up around him into a dome.

 

Clint poked out a finger to test the boundary and the cage didn’t so much zap at his skin as it itched. Though the longer Clint touched it, the harder that itch got to bear. He’d been conveniently ignoring Freya standing just outside the dome’s range this entire time, and he was beginning to think that it was time to acknowledge her and her smug grin watching him. “You wanna tell me what this is all about?”

 

“You have proven surprisingly resistant to my attempts to reinstate your memory.” Idunn replied from behind him. Clint whipped around to see that she’d appeared out of nowhere, probably lurking in the shadows to trigger the trap once Clint stepped in to it. It was a testament to how fuzzy the magic was making him that he hadn’t noticed her, no matter where she was hiding. Despite that, Clint was more grateful than he could say that Frigga wasn’t standing there with them. It was still stupid of him to think that things were handled, but not as stupid as if Frigga had been the mastermind.

 

“Uh huh.” Clint’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Reinstate’ meant these women thought they could bring back Heidir, meant another Asgardian mind-fucking him to get what they wanted. Clint drew on all his time undercover with Tasha, and all his years telling therapists to screw themselves, and kept his expression unmoved. “And how have you been trying to do that?”

 

Idunn strolled around Clint’s pen, watching the light with a hazy expression that Loki’s influence said meant she was examining the spell keeping him caged. “My apples, Clinton.”

 

“You guys grow fruit that screws with people’s memories? ‘Cause if you do, I vote that you probably should’ve pulled that shit out when Loki started losing his mind.”

 

“The apples themselves have no influence on an individual’s mind. Instead, they add to our strength, to our longevity, to all that unites us as Asgardians. In this case I used them as a base for another spell meant to help you remember all that you truly are.”

 

“So, you dosed the apples to try and make me be Heidir again?”

 

“And made the apples exceptionally appealing to your palate so that you would consume as many as possible.”

 

Idunn didn’t sound triumphant at that, just stating the facts. “So what you’re telling me is that you’re the evil queen and I’m Snow White.”

 

Both women paused and Freya snapped. “What are you speaking of? Neither of us is a queen, and no one here is evil.”

 

“Uh,” Clint gestured his hand to take in the whole of his glowing cage. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of thing good people do.”

 

“Oh, Clinton,” Idunn sighed. “You will understand soon.”

 

He wanted to snap back something snarky, but the cage collapsed around him, sucking in like a loose balloon and clinging to him like a second skin. Clint started to thrash, but beyond his panic he could hear Idunn explain, “It was difficult to get you to respond to my apples at the beginning. The spell would linger on your skin for hours, but would never sink in to permanency. But once you met Ryalt the spell found a foothold and has been working wonders on heightening your connection to Asgard and making room for Heidir. In truth, once you began actually responding to the spell, it progressed at a pace I was not expecting. The surge of memories you had yesterday was scheduled to happen two days from now, and then only in your sleep so the Avengers couldn’t interfere. If your green Beserker hadn’t interrupted the process then we would be speaking with Heidir right now. As it is, Lady Freya and I have decided it is time to take more drastic measures.”

 

That’s when the pain set in. The scratching pressure of the light sunk below his skin and tore him down to the bone. Clint had heard SHIELD agents describe being flayed, and this was too close to that for comfort. He could imagine blood seeping from the invisible cuts to his skin. He’d learned long ago that when you were being tortured your own pride didn’t matter. If you wanted to scream, you screamed. Maybe the rescuing agents would hear you, and even if they didn’t, the sound would give you the relief you needed to hold out a little longer.

 

So Clint screamed, and he thrashed, and he didn’t give two flying shits that Freya was stroking her hand along his face, looking actually damn sorry for all the pain this was causing. “It will be better soon,” she murmured. “In the end it will be worth the pain.” Clint tried to headbutt her, but he didn’t have the range of motion, and he was pretty sure that spit would do nothing more than trickle down his chin and make this more humiliating than it already was.

 

Some part of his senses could tell that Idunn was chanting, something low and strong that the All-Speak didn’t have the power to translate. The words slipped over him like rain, and the edges of his vision started to white out. It was too close to what Loki had done to him, too close to having himself erased in favor of someone who he’d never met, someone they thought he’d been one upon a time. Clint screamed again, the soul-wrenching bellow he’d wanted to give the moment Loki’s spear had touched his chest, but he’d been forced into the back of his own mind, unable to.

 

He knew it was coming as the circle of white crept closer and closer, obscuring his vision. He was being erased, all the things he’d learned, all he’d fought to make of himself, it wouldn’t matter anymore. And the worst part was, he wasn’t even going to get the chance to say goodbye. Tasha would never forgive herself for not being there for him when he went, for not being there when he died. And Coulson. Clint had just started to live, just realized that there was a whole damn other box that he’d been keeping himself in and he was going to break it down. Was going to get back to Midgard and ask Coulson if he might want to get coffee someplace that was not the break room. Then he would see the Son of Coul in the light of the sun the way she had seen him in the pristine light of Asgard’s stars.

 

And it was done. Clint wasn’t the only person in her mind. In his mind. _His_. And as Idunn’s chanting went on, the other presence pushed closer to the surface, shoving him into the background. But Clint fought. _He_ fought like Loki had never given him the chance to, and Clint could feel his mind fraying around the edges, collapsing under the weight of his soul turning against itself.

 

All too soon it was too much, too painful to bear the pressure of two identities struggling to be the one in control of one person. The white took over his vision, and the last thing Clint saw before he slipped into the white was Freya’s ecstatic smile.


	14. Chapter 14

Clint came back to himself still in center of the combat ring of the palace’s grand hall, only, it wasn’t. Everything was in the right spot, except the tables were gone, and everything was white. And not that matte sheen that came from painting over something, but truly and legitimately white.

 

“Given your fondness for Harry Potter, I decided you would appreciate the aesthetic.”

 

Clint spun around, reaching for a bow that wasn’t there. Cross-legged on the ground behind him was a Valkyrie, and Clint didn’t need the sleeveless armor or the raven tattoo on her arm to know who she was. Clint figured fighting wasn’t probably something he should do in his own head and dropped down across from her to grumble, “You know, you picked a really shitty time to show yourself, Heidir.”

 

“I have not shown anything, Clint. I got forced to the surface of your mind when I was content to have not one damn thing to do with your shitshow of a life.”

 

“Really?” Clint tossed his hands to the side, taking in the limbo that he’d found himself in. “‘Cause it looks like I’m not the only person in my head anymore.”

 

“This mess has nothing to do with me.”

 

“Are you telling me that someone else implanted you in my head? Because that doesn’t seem like it would work.”

 

“Do not sass me, Clinton. I have no desire to be here anymore than you do. I was content in Folkvangr. I earned my chance to rest in peace with my warrior sisters and I didn’t appreciate being ripped away from it!”

 

“Then explain to me why in the hell we’re both here!”

 

“Because despite the All Father’s wisdom, he has never been the best of tacticians. His seers told him that trouble was brewing on Midard, so he thought to prepare for that by violating the rules of our existence and pulling his greatest warriors out of Valhalla and Folkvangr before their time.”

 

“Not one damn word of this makes any sense.”

 

Heidir rolled her eyes so hard that Clint wouldn’t have been surprised if they fell out of her head. “The honorable dead who fall in battle are gathered by Valkyries. Half go to Odin’s hall called Valhalla, and the other half to Freya’s hall, Folkvangr.”

 

“This part I know.”

 

“If you do not shut your smart mouth I will refuse to tell you anything and leave you to sit in this accursed place for all eternity while I roam about in your body.”

 

“Hey, I had to get my smart mouth from someplace,” Clint sneered.

 

A smile broke across Heidir’s face. “Yes, yes you did. It is the right of the dead to remain in those halls until the end of the world when the seals that bind them are broken and they are called to the great last battle. However, Odin has never been a patient creature, and he doesn’t like the thought that he might lose.”

 

Clint flopped backwards against the stone floor and stared up at the white ceiling. His little bit of Loki was enough to fill in the gaps. “Odin tried calling you back from the dead to fight for him by forcing you to reincarnate.”

 

“Yes. Given that I died to save Odin’s life, he supposed that I would be the best for his task. He expected my soul to come back to Asgard, to be one of the daughters born to the Valkyire through their trysts. But it seems my soul felt more kinship with a male archer on Midgard than it did with any of my sisters.”

 

“So,” Clint hesitated, “my shooting?”

 

“Is all your own. I have simply been a passenger through the years of your life. I have made a point to not influence you one way or another because I would have hated it if such a thing had been done to me.”

 

“Right, thank you for that. But, you haven’t been, like…”

 

Heidir rolled her eyes. “No Clint, I haven’t watched you have sex.”

 

“Hey, the sex has been hot, the sex I wouldn’t mind. It’s the masturbation and the pathetic crying that bothers me.” That got Heidir to laugh, and Clint thought that maybe he could be friends with this chick who’d been living in his head his whole life. “And Loki?”

 

“Magic was never my strong suit. And if he had known that I dwelt within your soul he would twisted you to even more horrifying ends.”

 

“Horrifying?”

 

“Loki would have bred you.”

 

Clint swallowed back the urge to vomit. “Right, well, let’s never talk about that again. But if I’m me, and you’re you, and we feel like two completely different people, what in the hell is going on here?”

 

Heidir sighed. “Our situation is… unique. Freya was hoping that you would willingly open your mind to my memories and the piece of me within you so that we might merge and become one soul bound together for the same purpose. However, that would require me wanting be reincarnated in the first place.”

 

“The glitch in my memories last night. That was you, wasn’t it?”

 

Heidir nodded. “I could feel Idunn’s magic thinning the line between our souls. Rather than let their plan proceed according to schedule, I thought it might be in both our best interests to mix things up. I pushed on the wall between us when you were where your companions could see and actually do something to protect you. Idunn’s magic wasn’t strong enough to bring me out against your will completely, so your mind made whatever sense it could out of my memories before it reasserted itself as the one in charge of your body.”

 

“Is this what usually happens when people get reincarnated?” Some part of Clint did wonder if he had been a different kind of person if he would’ve welcomed Heidir into his mind and his heart back when he was a boy. Maybe would’ve been spotted by Asgard and dragged home, spent his whole life in love with someone who’d loved him a thousand years ago and loved him still. Maybe those extra years in the back of his mind might’ve kept him from some stupid decisions, might have kept him safe. But the man who might’ve had Heidir beside him wouldn’t have risked his life on Tasha, wouldn’t have found his way to SHIELD, wouldn’t have been a superhero. He’d be one of the Asgardian assholes who didn’t understand how the world worked beyond the confines of their little kingdom, unleashing their problems on the rest of the Nine Realms because they were too damn proud to understand that they were idiots. He’d _be_ one of these idiots.  

 

“Reincarnation does not happen often enough for anything about it to be characterized as ‘usual’. However, the overwhelming majority of those who come back often do so with, or for, the person they loved.”

 

“And who in the hell would that be?”

 

Heidir cocked an eyebrow at him like his eyesight couldn’t possibly be so bad that she needed to point it out. With that, Clint actually began paying attention to her. She had his jaw, though her nose looked like it hadn’t been broken half a dozen times like his had. And they had the same eyes. All the little differences didn’t matter so much when he could see the same green-grey looking back at him. Just as Clint couldn’t see Coulson because he was too close, he could see this romance because it wasn’t his, because he was far enough way that taking one look at Heidir was enough to make it all clear. “You were gonna wait for him, weren’t you?”

 

“I have waited for him, I will wait for him, and when you slip from this world and our souls are no longer bound together, I will wait for him still.”

 

The world shuddered beneath them and Clint looked around, half expecting the whole place to be collapsing around them. “We can’t stay like this for long, Clint. We’re both hovering in the middle place, and a body is not meant to have two souls in equal control.”

 

Part of Clint wanted to ask if there was a way to let her go, to set her free so she wasn’t stuck waiting around for Clint to die off so she could go back to where she’d come from. But he knew what an impossible op felt like, knew when things couldn’t be stopped and people couldn’t be saved. Some lesser part of him fully recognized that part of the reason he wanted to help her get free was so he’d never have to worry about someone else in the back of his head ever again.

 

But things were what they were, and Clint gave Heidir a sharp nod and asked, “How do I take back my body?”

 

“Think of the stretch in your shoulders when you pull back your bow. Think of the burn of too-hot coffee on your tongue.” Clint’s eyes fluttered closed against his will. “Think of Natasha’s fingers in your hair, and what Phil might taste like if you took a chance.” This seemed like the right time to snark something back at her, but Clint couldn’t seem to make his tongue work. Only Clint didn’t much care about his tongue at the moment, because he could hear the sound of bullets.

Clint slammed back into his body to find Idunn gagged and hogtied with Coulson’s gun in Tony’s hand pointed at her leg. Freya was smooshed underneath the Hulk, while the rest of the team had tasers drawn against the Asgardian soldiers. Thor tried to talk everyone down, but he was less than effective since Mjolnir sat on Clint’s chest. It was, unfortunately, not the strangest thing Clint had ever woken up to.

 

“Hey, guys?” Clint interrupted the standoff. “Anyone wanna tell me what’s going on here?”

 

Tasha grabbed Jane and wrenched her back to the wall before the girl could get forward to check on the now conscious Clint. Instead, Clint could see Tasha shift one of her spare throwing knives into position to take Clint out if he wasn’t the person who answered him. Tasha flicked her eyes over to him, hard and hesitant, and asked, “What’s the first thing you said to me?”

 

Clint gave her the jauntiest grin he could while flat on his back with a magic hammer pinning him to the ground. “‘I’m a little disappointed you’re not wearing black.’” Tasha smiled, and the Avengers unclenched, letting Thor’s words of reason actually take over the conflict.

 

“That is not possible!” Freya hissed. Well, as much as a person could hiss while the Hulk was cutting off their air supply.

 

Since Clint was in exactly the same position—only, minus the Hulk—he grinned at her while people still argued above their heads. “Well it must be since I’m still here.”

 

“The spell should have been perfect! Heidir’s soul should be in charge of that body.”

 

“Heidir and I had a chat, and we figured that since it’s, ya know, _my body_ that I could stay in charge of it.

 

“That’s not—”

 

“You did this whole thing because you’re pissed that Heidir didn’t tell you she was planning of being reincarnated, right? You wanted to drag her soul back to the surface so you could talk with your friend. Which, if you had actually _asked_ there’s a good chance I might’ve let Bruce teach me meditation or let you guys do some easier version of the spell so you could talk to her anyway.” Freya scoffed. “Hey, maybe I might’ve helped, and now we’ll never know. But because I’m a better person than you, I’m gonna tell you what made her leave Folkvangr without telling you. Here’s the thing: Heidir didn’t plan on reincarnation. She didn’t tell you that she wanted to come back because she didn’t actually want to.”

 

“People don’t get reincarnated by accident!” Freya snapped.

 

“They do when Odin is trying to subvert the system.” That’s when Clint realized that the room was paying attention to their conversation.

 

“Explain yourself.” Idunn demanded.

 

“The seers told Odin that shit was coming, so rather than wait for Ragnarok, Odin decided to drag his best warriors back from wherever it is you guys go when you’re done here. Only, ‘cause my life can never be that simple, Heidir ended up with me rather than some Asgardian. She didn’t choose to come back, so I’m not really the reincarnated version of her, and she stayed out of my business.”

 

“You _are_ Heidir.”

 

“Nope. She’s in there, but I’m not her and she’s not me. She’d just kinda hanging out until I die.”

 

“That is not possible!”

 

“Hey man, I don’t pretend to have any idea what in the hell you people get up to around here, but I know what she told me, and I know she’s the one who explained to me how to take my body back.”

 

“Cease this!” One of the guards snapped. “All of you will explain yourselves to Lady Frigga and she will decide what to do with you.” He waived them all to their feet, and everyone went willingly. Though the willingness of Freya and Idunn was probably tainted more by their shock than by actual want to go.

 

Clint tried to shift up, but Mjolnir wasn’t having any of that. He gave the hammer a soothing pat. “Hey, Mjolnir, buddy, can you let me up now?”

 

If an inanimate object could sulk, Mjolnir would be doing that right now, but it shifted its weight just enough to let Clint get to his feet. He ignored the guards staring at him like he was a crazy person because he had Mjolnir in his hand. (Clint was also very careful not to pay any attention to the tattoo still on his arm. It was still a twist of black ink and feathers, but Clint had spent enough time on roofs to know it wasn’t a raven any longer. There was a freakout to be had about waking up with a hawk on his skin instead, but not when he was surrounded by Asgardian soldiers.) “Is there a reason you guys felt the need to keep me stuck to the floor?”

 

“I did not use Mjolnir to keep you in place, Mjolnir did that all on its own.”

 

“What?” Because Clint believed as much as Thor did that Mjolnir was more than metal, but believing that didn’t mean Clint had stopped paying attention to physics.

 

Stark smacked Clint on the back and pushed him down the hall so there would be room for the Hulk to lumber on behind them. Clint gave the Hulk a pat and murmur of thanks, while the Hulk stroked one massive hand down the line of Clint’s back and grumbled, “Birdie stay.”

 

“Yeah buddy, Birdie stayed. You the one who used the hammer?”

 

Hulk snorted, which was a strange enough sound that the whole hall rumbled around them. “Nope,” Tony grinned. “That hammer left Thor’s side and went whipping around the corner looking for you. It smashed though the magic wrapped around you and ripped you right out of it.”

 

Clint cradled the hammer to his chest and gave it a squeeze. “Ah Mjolnir, I’m definitely getting you some hammer polish for this.”

 

“Hammer polish?” Stark leered.

 

“You heard me, Stark. He saved me from getting mind-fucked again. I’d actually ‘polish his hammer’ if that’s what he wanted in exchange.”

 

“Are the two of you actually discussing performing a sex act with Thor’s weapon?” Jane asked. Both men turned to her with terrible grins, and the scientist rolled her eyes to distract from the blush. “Shut up, both of you.”

 

The Avengers kept up the weapon-related innuendo until they ended up in front of Frigga, and despite what they’d been through the last few days, none of them were willing to discuss ‘weapons’ in front of Thor’s mom. Freya tried to explain her actions to Frigga, but Coulson leapt right on that and made it clear they were furious.

 

“I do not understand your complaint, Son of Coul. The spell didn’t hold.”

 

“That’s not the point.” Coulson snapped in his most coldly efficient voice. “Two of Asgard’s leaders willingly subjected Hawkeye to an experimental spell in the hopes it would rewrite his personality. They did this without his consent, and without concern for the effects a spell like that might have on him physically as a Midgardian, and emotionally as the subject of Loki’s prior abuse.”

 

“You can understand Agent Coulson, that is was not Clinton’s decision to make.”

 

“I do _not_ understand. I cannot imagine what kind of logic would make you believe that Clint has no right to decide what gets done with his own body.”

 

“When his body contains the soul of a Valkyrie—”

 

“The fragment of Asgardian soul that invaded him trumps the Midgardian soul that belongs there?”  

 

Clint slipped out of the room, leaving Coulson locked in his battle of wills with Frigga. They both knew that Frigga agreed with Coulson completely, but she had to put on a show. But more than that, the part of Clint that still chatted with Loki knew damn well that Frigga had let all of this happen. Magic like this couldn’t happen in Frigga’s halls without her knowing about it. She’d let Clint get kidnapped and almost mind-fucked, and Loki approved of her tactics. Coulson’s debate with Frigga might convince some of the listening Asgardians that the Earthlings were worth more than they gave them credit for, but probably it wouldn’t do a damn thing other than make Idunn’s and Freya’s positions tenuous for the mistreatment of a Valkyrie. With a few days of Clint’s discomfort as the price, and Frigga and Gaea had shattered all the power that Idunn and her reckless magic wielders and Freya’s Valkyries held in Asgard. Frigga had made herself unofficially _the_ All Mother, with Gaea as her right hand.

 

Either way, Clint slipped out of the room because the conversation wasn’t really about him anymore. It hadn’t ever been about him in the first place.


	15. Chapter 15

Clinton Barton was quiet on his feet. So quiet that Heimdall didn’t realize the archer was on his way down the Rainbow Bridge until he was nearly to the entrance of the Bifrost chamber. For the whole of Clinton’s stay in Asgard, Heimdall had devoted a fragment of his attention to the archer, keeping a careful eye upon him in case some fool went too far in their pursuit. The support of Clinton’s friends had been enough that Heimdall had thus far felt no need to interfere in his behalf.

 

The all-sight meant nothing if you could not understand what you saw, and Heimdall knew where Clinton’s affections rested. Clinton had borne the death of the Son of Coul with grace and poise before his companions, only to retire to his cage of a resting place and scream at the loss of his beloved. Heimdall had been tempted—oh merciful fates had he been tempted—to use the Tesseract to bring Clinton to him. The man would be safe from the machinations of his people and nestled in the bosom of friendship of those who knew him and loved him from his life before.

 

But, despite all Heimdall’s desire to protect him, he knew that Clinton would endure. He always did.

 

Letting Clinton go his own way did not mean Heimdall left him alone. No, he watched. He always watched, so that Clinton might have company even when he curled up in his nest and wondered how he had ended up there.

 

But now he saw what happened when he pulled his gaze away to give Clinton privacy while he spent his night beside the Son of Coul, only to have Idunn’s magic pull him to his slumbering feet and lead him into peril once again. And it seemed Clinton would seize any amount of privacy as an opportunity to sneak around Asgard unwatched.

 

The young human slipped through the door and settled himself down on the ledge at the far side of the chamber, the same ledge that he had tried to jump off those few days ago when he first arrived in Asgard. He took in the sight of the unfettered sky before him, and Heimdall took in the line of Clinton, wrapped up in his Asgardian clothing.  

 

The silence hung between them for a long moment, comfortable and fitting while both of them looked their fill at their chosen view. But Clinton had never been very good at keeping to the silence. “You know, you could’ve mentioned that you were the one Heidir was in love with right when I got dragged through the Bifrost. It would’ve saved me a hell of a lot of trouble.”

 

“Even if I had mentioned it, Freya would not have believed me.”

 

“Why not?” Clint spun his legs back from their dangle and turned to give Heimdall his complete attention.

 

“I have always been consumed by my duty. She would think it impossible that I might shirk my responsibilities for so long as to fall in love with someone. Or that it would be impossible that Heidir would allow her lover to have someone else in her life be more important than she.”

 

“Well obviously Freya didn’t know Heidir all that well if she didn’t know about you.”

 

Heimdall gave that a little half shrug. “Heidir had a penchant for keeping quiet about the important things and speaking ceaselessly about everything else.”

 

“Yeah, I get that.”

 

“I imagine that out of all people, you would.”

 

“I get it, but I can’t understand why you two would let duty get in the way of something good. I mean, she’s been dead and you’ve been standing in that same damn archway for a thousand years. Did it never once cross your mind to say, ‘Hey Odin, I’ve been guarding your realm for a millennium without a day off. How about I take a break and go visit the love of my life?’”

 

“Heidir dwelt in Freya’s Folkvangr, not Odin’s Valhalla.”

 

The reply was so deadpan that Clint wished he had his bow to shoot at Heimdall for being such a bastard. “That’s not the point. I hate to admit it, but I’ve gotten a little emotionally involved in the two of you working this out. Since, ya know, the two of you being cagey nearly got my memory wiped.”

 

“Heidir would not allow that to occur.”

 

“How would you know, you haven’t seen her in a thousand years.”

 

The snark in his tone was enough to break Heimdall’s focus from the Realms below them and instead drew him to Clinton. “Asgardians are not the most changeable of creatures.”

 

“You guys may not be, but she’s spent a few decades hanging out in the back of the mind of a human. Who knows what that’s going to do to her personality.”

 

The corner of Heimdall’s mouth quirked up. “And what would you recommend, Clint?”

 

“Figure out a way to see her. Some way that doesn’t involve screwing with my memory. Train your replacement and blackmail Freya for all I care, but find a way to be with her.”

 

“It is no easy task you ask of me.”

 

“Well, you’ve got the whole span of my life to figure something out, and I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.”

 

With that their conversation trailed off. Heimdall’s attention was required elsewhere, and Clint didn’t care much for talking about the love life of two people who cared more about their duty to this awful place than they did to each other. It was easy to ignore anything else he might have said since Tasha and Coulson were striding down the Rainbow Bridge.

 

However, it seemed that Heimdall figured he was allowed to interfere just as much as Clint had. “He would’ve fought for you, you know.” Clint kept his eyes on his friends walking down the bridge, trying to ignore Heimdall while he calculated just how long they had before Tasha could hear what the Gatekeeper was saying. Just how long Clint had before he had to suck it up and confess that he’d figured out what he wanted and he wasn’t going to spend the next thousand years letting duty or any other shit get in the way.

 

“In truth, I am impressed at how he maneuvered himself into the perfect position to do just that. The Warriors Three agreed to fight in the first place because of his word, showing his command over them with his personality rather than through combat. Then your three champions deferred to him, with the Hulk obeying his touch to fall back, your Widow trusting him to handle Earl Ryalt’s disposal, and the good Captain turning over his weapon for the fight. He even then defeated his only challenger for your hand before the Hulk threw Ryalt through the door. It was both an efficient and subtle way to make himself your only suitor without ever actually letting anyone realize that’s what he’d done. Had the whole affair gone on, he would’ve blindsided all of Asgard by being the only person with the right to fight for your hand, and I suppose in a match between Heidir and the Son of Coul she would’ve wanted him to win.”

 

Phil had gotten closer with every word, his long stride perfectly matched to Natasha’s. The breeze of the waterfall below them ruffled her red curls and Phil stretched out a steady hand to brush the hair out of her eyes. Tasha tipped her head forward to make the curls fall forward again so Phil would have to repeat the gesture, and he got that crinkle around his eyes that meant he was trying not to laugh. “He always does,” Clint murmured before he called out to his approaching friends, “Hey guys. We heading out?”

 

“Frigga invited us to stay for another feast before we left.” Tasha flicked her eyes over to Coulson. “We _politely_ declined.”

 

“Philip J. Coulson,” Clint smirked. “Did you pull your gun on Thor’s mom?”

 

“No, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted.”

 

Tasha dropped down next to Clint at the chamber’s edge, conveniently putting herself between Clint and Heimdall. “The others are collecting our stuff.”’

 

“Bruce?”

 

“Still Hulked out. Big green refuses to go back to sleep until after he’s sure that no more of our people are going to get snatched.”

 

“Can’t say I blame him.” Clint dropped his head to Tasha’s shoulder. He glanced to the side and met Coulson’s gaze, Coulson who was watching their exchange with soft eyes. Men like Coulson didn’t blush when they’d been caught staring, and instead Coulson gave Clint a sad sort of smile before he turned his attention to Heimdall to enquire if they would actually be allowed to leave this time.

 

Only, Heimdall’s gaze wasn’t on the window that let him see the whole of the Nine Realms, it was on Coulson. He had his head cocked to the side with a considering sort of look and he murmured something Clint couldn’t hear. Just like with the blush, men like Coulson didn’t ever look dumbfounded, but Coulson did. Clint was on his feet before he had the chance to think, pressing himself between Coulson and Heimdall and demanding to know, “What did you say to him?”

 

Heimdall quirked an eyebrow, or at least, as much of an eyebrow as Clint could see behind that massive helmet. Clint wanted to shout that no, this wasn’t a time for smirking. He didn’t want Heimdall telling Coulson all about past loves and former lives, because Coulson had a bad habit of watching Dr. Phil as part of his ‘reality’ TV lineup. Which meant if Coulson found out that apparently Heimdall had been the love of what was technically Clint’s former life, then Coulson would give Clint a lecture on seeing where that took him and making sure that moving on was exactly what Clint wanted to do. (At least, Clint hoped that was the lecture Coulson gave him. At this point there was a very big chance that Coulson would just laugh and wish him well. Like the last few days had just been for fun. The kind of stupid thing you did on vacation.)

 

Clint was so close he could feel Coulson pressed up against his back. He wanted to bundle the man up and drag him through the Bifrost where no Asgardian would be able to interfere in their lives ever again. Coulson heaved out a sigh, and Clint knew what that one meant. It was the “Why, Barton? Why must you make my life so difficult?” sigh. Clint tried not to flinch.

 

Coulson dropped his head to rest against the back of Clint’s, and against his will, Clint shuddered at feeling Coulson’s warm breath against him when people were actually awake enough to see. Clint could feel Coulson’s nose brush up against the sensitive skin an assassin knew better than to let someone touch. Then Coulson heaved a sigh and asked, “Did you make the right decision?”

 

With Coulson’s face buried in the soft flesh of Clint’s neck, he didn’t see how Heimdall kept his eyes on his target, but raised one hand to brush across the line of Clint’s cheek. “I serve Odin the Allfather. Who traded his eye in exchange for a drink from Mimisbrunnr, the Well of Knowledge. It gave him all the wisdom he could ever want, wisdom that he is acclaimed for throughout the Nine Realms. I believe in my duty, in my kingdom, in my oaths. And still, I believe I made the wrong decision.”

 

“What, uh, what decision are we talking about here guys?”

 

“Heimdall told me that the love of his life sacrificed herself out of loyalty to a King who had not lived worthy of that gift. That if I was going to trade love for duty, I had better be sure it was worth it.”

 

Clint’s heart stopped, but he managed to get out: “And is it? Uh, worth it?”

 

Coulson didn’t laugh, but he was tempted. Clint could feel it. Well, not so much feel it as he could see it in Tasha rolling her eyes at him. “I don’t know, Barton. This is going to require a hell of a lot of paperwork with Fury.”

 

Clint twisted in Coulson’s grip and smacked him as hard as he was willing considering he was still a little nervous that too much pressure would rip Coulson’s heart back open. “Whoever told you you were funny was full of shit, Sir.”

 

“Actually, you did Clint. Several times.”

 

“Well I think you’re pretty, Sir. So my judgment can’t be trusted.”

 

Coulson stilled at the unexpected compliment, then smirked. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me pretty before, Barton.”

 

“Not that I know is bullshit, Sir. I’ve called you pretty a bunch of times when I’ve been stoned out of my mind in medical.”

 

“I don’t think it counts if you say things like that when under chemical inducement.”

 

Natasha threw one of her knives at them, managing to overcome years of conditioning to nail Clint upside the head with the butt of the knife rather than burying it in his skull. “We’re bantering, Tasha!” Clint replied, avoiding looking at her since Coulson had a teasing smile on his lips and Clint didn’t want to look away in case it vanished in the meantime.

 

“If the two of you keep bantering then you’ll never actually have a conversation.”

 

“Really? The Black Widow is advocating a conversation about feelings?”

 

“Either you have it now or you have it in a month after you’d done damage to one another and drunk most of my emergency stash of vodka. I prefer now, when you can fix it with Thor’s mead.”

 

He would’ve said that they weren’t going to damage each other but that was bullshit, and Clint knew it. People hurt one another. That’s what they did. It was humanity’s lot in life to hurt and get hurt by the people you let close. Only kids and idiots thought otherwise. The trick was deciding if all those days someone didn’t hurt you were worth that one day when they did. Coulson was worth it though, Coulson was always worth it.

 

Only, the moment the word “feelings” had crossed Tasha’s lips, Coulson had frozen. You wouldn’t be able to tell if you hadn’t seen Coulson get blindsided in half a dozen meetings over the years, or brought the Black Widow into his hotel room and said she wanted to join SHIELD. It was an unnatural stillness that mean Coulson was rearranging his world view to figure out how he’d missed this coming, and what he was going to do with it now that the knew about it.

 

“Oh shit, really?” Clint asked. “Sorry, I though it was kind clear that I’m in love with you.”

 

Coulson didn’t flinch at that, which Clint was grateful for, but his eyes did swell to the size of dinner plates. “No Barton, you didn’t exactly make that clear.”

 

“Does that mean you wanna, uh, not do this anymore? Because I get that if you don’t. I was kind of mess before, and now that I’ve got Loki and a random Asgardian chick floating around in the back of my head it’s not gonna get any better.”

 

Clint didn’t quite have a speech prepared, but he did have a very thorough ramble. There was a long list of reasons why Coulson getting involved with him was a terrible idea, and Clint had no problem telling Coulson all of them to keep him from doing something stupid. It’s just, it was hard to give Coulson a lecture on his flawed lifestyle choices when the man in question had grabbed Clint by the scruff of his shirt and dragged him forward into a hard kiss.

 

At that point, Clint’s higher brain function turned off. Coulson’s tongue was in his mouth. Clint wasn’t entirely sure how it had gotten there, or how Coulson’s hand had found its way to Clint’s ass where it could grip and knead, but there it was, and Clint wasn’t complaining. Instead he let Coulson take control—yes, _let_ , Clint wasn’t weak in the knees. Far too soon (or not, Clint couldn’t really tell at the moment) Coulson pulled back, taking a long draw on Clint’s lip as he went. They stood there for a moment, staring breath, before Coulson murmured, “For future reference, I like it when you use your words.”

 

“I kinda figured I was being obvious.”

 

Clint didn’t have to pull his forehead away from Coulson’s, or even open his eyes, to know that Coulson had his eyebrow quirked. “Apparently not. And keep in mind, that when you use your words, I reward you like this.”

 

“You gonna reward me like this when I do my paperwork?”

 

“Something similar, I promise.” He could feel Tasha rolling her eyes, but didn’t bother backing away or pretending like she didn’t think this was awesome. Coulson slipped his hand up from Clint’s ass to the small of his back, what Clint assumed was a sign that he was going to be serious for a moment, despite what Clint might have preferred. “What made you decide this was the time to start something?”

 

“‘Decide’ means that I’d been deciding against doing this before. Didn’t decide. Just had no damn idea I was in love with you.”

 

“And how did you realize that you were?”

 

Clint shrugged. “Ryalt pointed it out to me.”

 

“That’s… not comforting, Clint.”

 

“Why not? He said he knew I was in love with somebody else and deserved to be loved back.”

 

“Putting aside that he told you this because he intended for _him_ to be the person loving you back,” Clint’s brain stuttered for a second since he hadn’t quite realized that. “I can’t imagine that your brain leapt to me.”

 

“Course not. I thought he was talking about Tasha. Not that I don’t love Tasha, but it’s a different kind of love. The sex was good though.” He could hear Tasha sigh, and what he was actually pretty sure was her thumping her head against the wall. “Oh, am I not supposed to talk about sex with other people when you’re hugging me?”

 

“I can’t say it does good things for my self esteem, but I told you I’d rather have you tell me things than not, so there are worse reactions.”

 

Clint would’ve thumped him for that, but thumping would’ve required Clint stepping out of his embrace, and that wasn’t something he was willing to endure at this moment. “It shouldn’t. I mean, it’s Tasha.”

 

“It shouldn’t. And it’s not about you Clint, it’s about my own embedded concerns about a superhero ten years my junior wanting a relationship with me.”

 

Clint actually pulled his head back at that one, not so far that he didn’t have the warmth of Coulson against his hipbones, but enough that he could properly look at the other man like he was an idiot. “But why would that shit matter? You’re Coulson, age doesn’t matter when you’re Coulson.” It made perfect sense to Clint, since all that was Philip J. Coulson had absolutely nothing to do with his age and instead had to do with his good heart and steady hands. And Clint told him so.

 

“My hands?”

 

Clint slipped those hands out from behind him—though he lamented that they’d have longer to go before they got to his ass—and pressed a kiss to his palms. “They’re good in a fight, which, don’t get me wrong, that’s hot, but it’s more that I trust them. I know they’ll turn up when I need them, and they won’t let me fall. That’s what Ryalt said. Well, not that exactly, but he said that he knew the second I let you put your hand on my neck and didn’t tense up that I more than trusted you. He said I relaxed when you touched me, like I knew you’d handle things. And that’s how he knew I loved you.”

 

“And Ryalt knowing I loved you was enough for you to know that you loved me?”

 

“You know me, Sir. Sometimes I need a little distance before things make sense.”

 

Coulson hmmed, and pressed a soft kiss to Clint’s lips, pulling back before Clint could sink into things like he wanted to. “Is there anything you’d like me to say, Clint?”

 

“Nah, I think I’m good.”

 

“Really? You don’t want me to tell that I’m in love with you?”

 

Clint chuckled, “You’re making out with me in front of the Avengers, Sir. I’m pretty sure words are unnecessary at this point.”

 

Ever so slowly, Coulson twisted his head and found their team standing at the entrance to the Bifrost chamber, watching them kiss. Steve had his hand over Stark’s mouth, while Thor did the same for Darcy as the Asgardian himself managed to look at them like they were puppies. Coulson let out a pained sigh, but he didn’t bother stepping away from Clint. “Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly be any harder to explain this trip.”

 

“At least I’ll be helping you out with paperwork now.” Clint gave Coulson his most lecherous of grins.

 

Coulson rolled his eyes, but took Clint by the hand and stepped over to join their team. “Yes, yes you will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Thank you to all the beautiful people who stuck this out with me and have been reading along while I got things together. You've made a world of difference to me and my writing, and I appreciate all your support.


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